This is somehow sad and beautiful

I realized no one has missed me
or my words as I faded from the poetry scene
silently as I arrived.
                No one noticed I was gone
                no one knocking at my door
                  or requesting anything of me.

I had settled into my life before
where poems rushed out
because I would die if they stayed;
                no longer writing to be seen
                  or heard, after so many years of invisibility.

I miss them sometimes,
the writers and the connection
and the sense I belonged
to something greater than myself.

Most of them are in the same place I left them,
huddled in a café reading or putting out meager books.
                No one has made it
                    like we all dreamed we would.