be a shame
to wipe the sweat
from your brow
look up from your desk
and realize you've dug
your own grave.

i can picture it
dusty desert roads
old motels when the
sky opens up and the
holes in the tent leak
the empty rooms and
bare mattresses of a
creaky single wide

a patch of wall where
a cross once hung for
so long the wallpaper
holds its faded image

payphones and
diner booths
card games and
cold pews

(sunbeams dreamily
landing in your eyes)

i can almost taste
cola flavored slushies
cans of beans and
cigarettes and coffee

and smell burnt pancakes
egg casserole the way grace's
mom made it at home
secondhand smoke a bonfire
made from incense and an
abandoned white church

i can hear the songs
the laughter tears and
screams to heaven over
rumbling rubber tires

i know the way they
talk and theorize
argue and laugh
cry and pray

i've felt it before
somewhere here
and there in
twinges of time

but nobody ever claimed
you could wander the
world in one day or that
writing a gospel was easy.

they will not always
agree with you and
they will not always say
what you want to hear

they'll hate and they'll
love right alongside
where the lines of right
and wrong don't blur

but at the end of the day
if they stick around
they'll stick around
through hell and back

and you'll know you have
an ally steering your back
with one *******
offered to those behind you

and until you've had a
judgemental friend
you will never know
how comforting that is.

no
i do not
have my
driver's license yet

please stop asking
how that's going

please
stop asking

because if you continue
asking i will be forced
to hedge on the truth
that i'm scared

of accidentally crashing
even just getting distracted
annoying other drivers
of not knowing what to do

(of having a panic attack
behind the wheel or losing
control of myself and
intentionally crashing)

that i only feel
safe in a moving
vehicle when my
mom's driving

and that i intend to move
to a city where the bus and
my own two feet take me
wherever i need to go

so please stop
asking me
or else i'll have to
say i'm scared

and i'm also scared
of telling people that.

(twist my neck around
180 degrees to the past)

they're back again
the doctor calls them
"dark thoughts"
i just call them hell

it probably didn't
help that i stopped
taking my medication
but i was feeling better

and i often forget
about my pills and
what i'm saying in
the middle of a sentence

and i often can't sleep
or something i don't even
know anymore i just know
if it's sleep it's disturbed

(i love my job but i would
love it more if i didn't
completely disassociate myself
from reality while i'm there)

"having two managers
with chronic illness was
probably not the best idea
i'm glad we've got you around."

i smiled at her and
choked a little on
what's always in
the back of my mind

why i didn't come in for
months last fall and what
haunts me when i turn
off the lights lock the
doors and sit in the dark
by the front window
watching condensation
run down the glass

(last night i dreamed
i had a panic attack and
they found me in the
back by the potato chips
and i had to explain that
what i was really afraid of
was the fact there was a
church next door)*

i know i've changed
but i just don't know
how i could have
changed so much so fast

it all seems like a blurred
dream in my past
of computer screens and
carpeting and cold
winter mornings drenched
in vanilla and scarves

and if it weren't for the
fact it shattered me
i would miss it in the way you
miss a rose-tinted window
that was always cold as ice and
cracked clear down the middle

so i twist my neck around
180 degrees to the past
from 110 to -19 but that
leaves 51 unexplored degrees

of summer and cold concrete
of winter and colder concrete
of who i was and who i wasn't
of who i am and who i will never be

i twist my neck around
180 degrees to the past
before i realize that
something's gone askew

i called it love but hindsight
calls it something else.

i guess mark and linda
drive a range rover now
because i saw them through
the windshield turning the corner

i'm choking in the
heat blasting from
the vents of the van
and sleeves of the past

i used to wear scarves
to infiltrate them
but then i found we
were still sharing shirts

(i'm keeping the scarves i
never wear so that someday
i can tie them all together and
hang myself from an upstairs beam
but if homocide were more
my style i'm unsure if it
would be more a matter of
revenge or personal tastes)

"you don't have any
reason to seek revenge
on your old church
or any other."

odd
that you no longer
want recompense
for the past

and odd
that one should
need recompense
from those of the cloth

i want to scream
that i need help
I NEED HELP NOW
but don't want to sound ridiculous

don't want to say that
i'm having nightmares
flashbacks
panic attacks

over something like
sunday mornings
sleeplessly reversing
to saturday nights

but on the other hand
i don't want to die of
whatever's keeping me
scared and awake

i just know that
the medication
isn't putting me to
sleep anymore.