Six lines, no punctuation, no capital letters, and a title that the poem quietly undercuts. "Togetherness" promises closeness, but what Dave Bonta gives us is a lover who is wanted only if silent and a pair of shoes that nobody has touched all day. The central idea seems to be that two beings can be close and still be alone, and that enduring this without a word can become a skill: "despair is an art." The poem comes with no date or context, so the best approach is to read what is on the page.
The first stanza begins with a frame: "in my book of tales." The speaker is telling a story, and "tales" suggests invention, so the desire that follows may be imagined, or a version of events the speaker prefers. Then comes the line break. "you desire me" is a complete statement, and for a moment it is a happy one. The next line takes half of it back: "not to speak / only to touch." The "not… only…" construction sets up a bargain in which contact is allowed and conversation is banned. The poem doesn't say whether this is tender or controlling, and the ambiguity is part of its force. The beloved wants a body and not a voice, or the speaker has decided so.
The second stanza leaves the human figures behind and turns to an object. "A pair of shoes let alone all day" is a clever phrase. "Let alone" usually means "not to mention," but here it slides toward "left alone" and also hints at permission, as if the shoes have been allowed their solitude. The shoes are the only real pair in the poem, the only literal togetherness, and they are empty and waiting. Bonta gives them a trait of human patience: they "seldom complain." The word "seldom" is a fine detail. It is more truthful than "never," because even the most patient sufferer grumbles now and then. And because there is no punctuation, "seldom complain" could belong to the shoes, or it could drift forward into the last line and describe the speaker as well. Judging by the imagery, the shoes work as a quiet stand-in for the speaker, a thing made to be used, worn and taken somewhere, now sitting idle.
The structure supports this. Both stanzas are tercets that start with a long line of about nine syllables and then fall into two clipped ones, three and four syllables in the first, four and five in the second. Each sentence seems to run out of breath, which suits a poem about not speaking. There is no rhyme and no end punctuation, so nothing is closed off or announced. The poem keeps its voice low, as its subject demands.
Even so, the sound is carefully managed. The soft, tapping t's of "tales," "to," and "touch" give the first stanza a gentle contact, and the hushed s of "speak" and "seldom" echoes the silence they describe. The most striking connection is between the first and last lines. "Desire" and "despair" share their opening letters and nearly their rhythm, so they bookend the poem like two sides of one coin. The word "pair" also sits hidden inside "despair," so the pair of shoes returns in the final line as a sound. Togetherness is literally buried in the word for its loss.
That last line, "despair is an art," is flat and aphoristic, with no exclamation and no self-pity. Calling despair an *art* implies practice, control and polish. It is something one gets good at, like the shoes that rarely complain. The poem demonstrates this by showing despair through restraint, never describing it directly.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it does with so little: one domestic object, one reversal, and one line break that changes a sentence's meaning. It also leaves the reader with an uncomfortable question about what togetherness really means. If two people are touching but not speaking, or a pair of shoes sits side by side with no one to wear them, is that closeness or just proximity? The poem declines to answer, and that silence is the point.