When we selected this poem, I was thinking about relationships — how one minute, we are in the kitchen making tasty meals, and the next we are writing and recording our podcast, and another, we are alone in our respective rooms, far from each other, drowning. And how, no matter how close you are with someone, they really don't know you beyond what you are willing to share.

I was thinking about abandonment. Oftentimes, families are the first to hurt you. Friends, same. You come out to your family as, say, gay, and they say you have brought them shame and excommunicate you. You make a lover jealous, they kill you.

So, Obi's poem is the last prayer of someone tired of domestic abuse, loneliness and abandonment. This is us, hoping that you reach us the way we are trying to reach you.

The ruin can end here.