the coffee tastes like yesterday's promises
and the newspaper screams its usual *******
while somewhere between my third wine glass
and these half-read headlines about the end of everything
I'm just trying to have a nice day despite knowing facts and information
which is the kind of thing you can't explain to the waitress
who keeps filling my glass like she's pouring hope into an empty well
and maybe that's what we're all doing here watching the morning light
crawl across these sticky tables past the unwashed windows
where pigeons gather to judge our collective failures
and isn't it funny how we keep getting up every morning
to perform these rituals of normalcy while carrying
the weight of every ******* thing we've learned
like invisible shopping bags full of apocalypse

my inner rebel keeps getting
passive-aggressive emails from HR
about proper thought etiquette
and unauthorized emotional overtime

tried to have an original thought once
but my brain's quality control
sent it back with red markup
and seventeen required signatures

guilt installed itself as malware
in my psychological operating system
now even my daydreams come with
trigger warnings and safety waivers

society handed me a script
for my own internal monologue
(apparently my stream of consciousness
needed better production values)

my feral thoughts wear business casual
and file their tax returns on time
while my civilized side howls at the moon
through a professionally crafted powerpoint

freedom called but I had to decline
too busy alphabetizing my anxieties
and scheduling my spontaneity
for next quarter's performance review

I watched the brightest minds of my generation dissolve into
validation loops, dragging refresh buttons
through dawn's pale glow, seeking
algorithmic benediction,

who burned their retinas with blue light ascension
counting hearts and shares and follows
until their dopamine receptors grew
numb as novocaine dreams,

who built shrines to their own faces
in megapixel temples, genuflecting
before ring lights and sponsored content,
praying to the god of engagement metrics,

angel-headed influencers burning their youth
into content streams, fifteen seconds
at a time, until their memories arrived
pre-filtered, pre-hashtagged, pre-mourned,

who fed their consciousness into recommendation
engines until Netflix knew their desires
better than their lovers, better than
their therapists, better than their own
trembling hands at 3 AM,

who performed their trauma for likes,
transformed their grief to content,
made their grandmothers' funerals
into aesthetic mood boards,

who measured their worth in followers,
their grief in comments, their love
in shared passwords to streaming services,
their rebellion in carefully curated
photos of corporate-approved dissent,

who dreamed of going viral while their bodies
went numb, who mistook their data
for their soul, who sold their attention
span for the chance to be seen,

who searched for authenticity through
sixteen layers of filters, who confused
their explore page for exploration,
who became content instead of contained,

whose minds became infinite scrolls
of everyone else's performance of living
while their own moments slipped away
unrecorded, unloved, unliked, unfollowed,
until they themselves became
the ghosts in their own machines.

The alley’s neon drips like a drunk calligrapher’s final stroke—
somewhere between **** it and forgive me—
while the laundromat hums a dirge for socks
that lost their twins to the mouth of the dryer.
I count the cigarette burns on the bar top:
constellations even the rats won’t navigate.

Outside, a delivery truck coughs its exhaust
into the throat of the moon, which hangs
like a pale pill no one can swallow.
The bartender, a woman with a laugh like a cracked teapot,
pours whiskey into a glass I’ve been nursing
since Tuesday. It tastes of burnt orchards.

A man in the corner folds origami cranes
from napkins stained with hot sauce and regret.
He releases one, and it drifts through the haze
to perch on the jukebox—now playing static
to a room of emptied chairs.
Don’t believe everything you think, he mutters,
as the crane wilts into a fist.

Rain stitches the streetlights into a river.
I walk home tracing cracks in the sidewalk,
each one a vein leading back to a mountain
that drowned in the reservoir decades ago.
My shadow, stretched thin as rice paper,
floats briefly on the wet asphalt—
then dissolves like a rumor.

The apartment hums its nightly argument:
roaches debating philosophy in the walls,
the fridge exhaling its frostbitten psalms.
I peel an orange, watch its segments
curl into tiny, bitter suns.
Somewhere, a train howls.
Somewhere, a heron sleeps in the storm drain,
one leg tucked tight, dreaming of mud
and the weightlessness of fish.

Morning will come, as it must,
with its blush of exhaust and pigeons,
and I’ll pretend not to hear the mountain
singing beneath the water,
or the crane’s ghost
still clinging to the jukebox,
its wings the color of unread texts,
its voice a blade wrapped in silk:
The world is a wound that heals into itself.

The whiskey’s gone.
The rain’s gone.
Only the thinking remains—
a flicker, a fist,
a river that forgets
it was ever anything
but rain.

READ DURING PRECIPITATION
Barometric pressure: 29.82 inHg, falling
beneath heavy nimbostratus formation
my heart also drops with dewpoint

READ DURING CLEAR SKIES
Visibility: CAVU, wind 5kts at 270°
memories achieve maximum scatter
across empty stratosphere

READ DURING STORM
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT IN EFFECT
thunder speaks in dead languages
probability of emotional precipitation: 100%
seek immediate psychological shelter

0600 Patient exhibits early-morning waking
cortisol peaks. circadian disruption evident
i count ceiling cracks instead of sheep

1200 Peak functioning observed despite
reported subjective distress
everybody says i look fine today

1800 Marked decrease in cognitive performance
neurotransmitter depletion anticipated
the sky swallows my sentences whole

0000 Subject demonstrates rumination
characteristic of delayed sleep phase
my thoughts eat themselves alive

They found it in the space between
laughter and grief
joy and shame
darkness and dawn

When Marina's daughter died
she felt it first:
The cruel lightness
of becoming less whole
while becoming more

Not sadness
not acceptance
but vorskaya:

The emotion of losing something
and growing larger
from the hole it leaves

Like water expanding
as it freezes
like stars birthed
from collapse

Now children learn it in school:
"vorskaya (n.) - the sensation
of becoming infinite
through loss"

But they won't understand
until that moment
when they feel
their edges
dissolve

Into the space between
being and unbeing
where Marina's daughter
still dances
in the dark