it's been 20 hours since the end

the hot water of an honest shower streams down my skin

she sent me a link to a youtube video
she says it's her breakup music

i click on it, but i don't listen to the words,
on account of how i'm mostly scotch tape today
from across the room, it sounds like despair

the sign at the side of the road says "right lane ends"
i yell at it "everything ends"
no one hears me

except maybe god
but god's not watching today
god's TiVoing me
god'll probably get to it later
i get it though
there's supernovas and auroras and kardashians to watch

the christians say that god knit me together in my mother's womb
all fearfully and wonderfully
i get the sense that maybe the good yarn was on back order that day
it's okay god
i also have days when i wake up late and almost miss the bus and forget my part of the group project that's due today

we got this, though

we got lots of ways to glue and macaroni up a brain just right
all this science and not enough places to stick it
i shove a handful through the blood-brain barrier and there it is
home
chemicals so sweet they make me cry glitter

it's funny how things can look the same but feel so different
when kelsey texts that we need to talk, that it needs to be over skype
it fills me with that old dread

it just takes a few words to scoop me out like a pumpkin
they don't last long, after you carve them

i want to take extra antidepressant tomorrow morning
it increases my risk of seizures but i don't care
i'm not sure how many hours i spent today
shuffling through walmart with downcast eyes
occasionally stopping to cry at a toaster or pillowcase

thirty one is mathematically prime
it doesn't feel very prime

when i get to the end of the toothpaste i know i still have time
i roll it and squeeze it and press it and
day after day this tube gives me what i need to get by until
one day it doesn't anymore
that's my thirty one

i watch the sad blue mouthwash disappear into the drain
i'm not sure why

people act like a breakup retroactively erases
all of the joy and value a relationship had
like its impermanence somehow robs it of significance

i figure every relationship ends
either in breakup or death
i don't think it makes them any cheaper

to regret anything is to wish for your own non-existence
without the steps and forking branches that brought you to here, you would be someone else
someone that your parents and best friends might mistake for you

i regret.

the sign at the side of the road says "right lane ends"
i yell at it "everything ends"

people act like a breakup retroactively erases
all of the joy and value a relationship had
like its impermanence somehow robs it of significance

i figure every relationship terminates
either in breakup or death
i don't think it makes them any cheaper

to regret anything is to wish for your own non-existence
without the steps and forking branches that brought you here, you would be someone else
someone that your parents and best friends might mistake for you

i regret

i wake up to october morning darkness crystallized under my eyes

i despise my smallness
i'm not sure what i mean by that but the feeling is thick in my bones

i wish i had more gravitas or impetus or something else sternly derived from Latin and Physics
wish i had a lever long enough to move myself, to advance the plot
i needed to do laundry three days ago. i still need to.
there is a ticket in the glove box of my car. today is its birthday. it is one week old. its name is driving-while-talking-on-the-phone-to-my-girlfriend or another arbitrary combination of shapes that represent sounds and ideas at the intersection of the nature of human contact and personal responsibility.
i don't know because i haven't read it yet

i think i could probably be more than i am
(more what?)

it's hard to remember which day it is
they all sound like cars driving past my apartment and a bathroom faucet that always drips
relativity says that everyone else is moving and I am perfectly still
october is when relativity first opens its autumn flower self
some time in april I will pick its rotting blossom from my skin

i remind myself that lots of streams have dormant times when thirst exceeds ability,
that even great rivers sometimes choke with silt, reduced by so much minutiae
that it just takes a change of season to set things right again

i am waiting for rain

I am in a bar with more TV than artwork on its walls. This breaks my principal rule of bars, but I had to *** and the bar was open and I felt guilty using the bathroom without buying anything, so I am drinking a Blue Point Toasted Lager and trying to make sense of a sample chapter of Judith Butler's book Gender Trouble on my smartphone while a group of three to six drunk men a few meters to my left debates the relative fuckability of Meg Ryan vs Sally Field in the nineties or the eighties or sometimes both and this whole thing feels ironic and like maybe it could be a scene in an indie movie.

tap me right and i am a tuning fork
my bones hum a desire to shirk, to move,
to shake the dust for vistas unseen

my feet are hungry
my skin has to taste every flavor of dirt
it gets bored with the daily repetition of texture and shade

what of all the palms unpressed and eyes ungazed?

i am a drunk and i'm late and i can't find my keys but i know they're in my bedroom somewhere
so i search unevenly, moving from corner to corner, stumbling, overturning pillows and ***** t-shirts, knocking down lamps, cursing and muttering, squinting and sweating ugly

this is my each day. my skin feels too tight. i want to crack it open at my elbows and the edges of my scalp and crawl out of myself,
swollen so large no city can contain me.
let me boil until i am atmosphere,
citizen of every nation,
kisser of every lip and eyelid,
dervish of every flame or patch of dry earth.

it begins with a meditation

she does not speak in thunder or the roar of conflagration
her voice is not rush of water or gust

listen for the small, still voice

find it in the hours when the black of the highway is unbroken by headlights and the night is a secret you tell no one

find it as a breeze lifts the sweat from your cheeks as you sit on a mountain outcrop born a billion years ago

find it sewn into the lining of the noise of the coffee grinder, in the gaps between the words "green tea with milk and honey"

the right silence is not a crushing of voice
do not cover the wound but let it bleed until there is nothing
silence is an emptying
each chore or occupation unattended is a balloon rising within you
do not contain them
touch each one, then let it go
watch it drift up into every shade of blue until it's too far to see

now, listen.