Wine slides into my belly
Hot and acid
Mm, needs to breathe.

Empty, a domed cavern
Hipbones,
my mother aghast.

Cast the flashlight around.
If there’s a heart here,
Let it show itself and
BEAT.
Rage the kettle drums
Of war.

Unleash in pieces,
Conceal the door.

Red with pink flowers
This blanket
And maybe on my insides too.
Blossom as they break apart.

Machine, start
Crush and crunch your barbs
Flick the crumbs away and reshape:
Curly hair remorseful,
Sad and sorry face.

You know I love being right
And I knew this was going to be a ******* day.

Every job interview
Feels like fighting to prove that
I deserve to exist.

Sitting at the kitchen table in a towel
Eating strawberry yogurt,
I wonder if I’ll leave on time.

32 minutes and counting.

I don’t know what you want,
What you like.
Write and write
To the tune of my own insight
Little praise,
Wish I might.

For a validation addict,
Pouring out my heart
To crickets
Is a nifty trick.

Stay the blinds.
The closeness of the flat and gray
Press ever forward,
Yes,
Forward and down,
the tidal wave of day
A promise delivered,
the threat of suggestion
An unbarring of the way.

Stay the blinds.
Speak to the shadows
Unhurried in their fleeting,
lingering upon the fragile lace
sighs and forget-me-nots
Caught in the corner just there,
Unmolested in the graze of a wallpaper seam,
Beneath the scattered fluff
Of yesterday’s brushed away minutes.

Stay the blinds,
If only for another moment,
Before the roaring morning
with its advancing demands
Breaks the surface of this dark, pooled reverie.

My 60 lb lap dog,
Wet nose pushed under my calf in the just-morning.

Ruiner of couch cushions
and muddy backyards,
Seeker of the softest blankets,
Speaker of many grumbling, awooing, harrumphing languages,
Your gigantic brown eyes home to the secrets of the universe.
My sassy girl, head tucked beneath my chin,
Here you sit, leaned casually
Against my side, your arm
Lap-barring me into place:

“Stay.”

The spinning hand
of fickle fate
Will rarely land
Square at the gate

So if it do,
Set fear aside.
With faith anew,
Push the gate wide.

Oh no.
This is it, isn’t it?
When I wake up tomorrow
It will be time to go home
To start my new life.
Early 60s guitars, Connie Francis
Singing “who’s sorry now?”
in that eternal swoony teenage croon.
Dissolving the gathering dread
Into sand for the hourglass
Rather than lock it away down down in my gut
to harden into glass.