I am work weak on Wednesday
in a heap of hangover and hesitation
with fingers on a phone haptically
actively anticipating feedback—
I need that why do I need that.
My angst and anxiety
is constant and courses
and throbs with a pulse
that demands concern
of a baby boomer crooning poetic
in the distance to call me antisocial, or you know,
you could just call me.
If being this busy in an age
of constant communication
feels like having slept
but not feeling rested,
I'd rather cancel my plans
like a responsible millennial
and go to bed.
I solemnly let slack off
the steering wheel
and the vehicle pulls itself out
of the curve before the spiral.
I slalom and wallow,
check my blind spots,
tunnel my vision into velocity
and swerve
into the other lane
with no other vehicles around
to feel the illusion of risk
when there is none.
There was no warning,
no obituary, no texts back,
just the hitch
of my breath
at the news of his death.
Suddenly,
I want him more now
than I needed him
so I send him messages
when nobody is around
to feel the illusion of him
when there is no one.
On the streets of San Diego
I waved goodbye to her like a sea’s crest
and fall
rising in my chest.
If this moment is worth thinking about,
it’s not worth overthinking,
but I do anyways.
I play coy in being closeted
and glare another convinced smile,
blare another compliment in our parting
and chuckle through the memory:
“I was afraid,” she had mouthed
and I mimed along post-martyr
in analytical cockiness
“I was afraid if you thought
you might be schizophrenic
you would think yourself there.”
she had said.
I am always in my own head,
my own way
too much.
I laugh the distrust off.
My mother says she s
I made myself
rest on the
third day of the flu
by way of lack
of oxy—
—a genesis on the exam room
table.
Inhales and
now my doctor
exhales
prescription:
four days of
futility and fruit.
Stubborn,
I would not forgive
the man I
am to become
if I did not exert to
achieve but I am
short of—
—the breadth of this
experience that
the flukes of my laboring
are fruits others bear with.
Flustered, but
I made myself rest
so I can breathe.
I.
The droplets clinging to my window, silly
and condensed sensations,
linger like doubts.
My breath is a breeze of palpable, hesitant fog
on the lived-in room's window; a warm frost on a cold surface.
I autograph the glass in sighs and wet fingertips.
I linger.
The glass is panged by the wisps of my whispers
and the wasps wafting up from the house siding.
Inside, I linger,
and exhale on curtains but the shutters, shudder
like doubts.
I remember,
as an introspective soul is oft to opt for,
that one evening in my adolescence
the same ankle-length, mineral-white curtains
adorning the front room today brushed my body
in a furious flurry to