I feel like a failure today

Dancing around in my underwear



Open the fridge: junk food.

Don’t want to eat it. Take it, eat it anyway



Are you my conscience?

Tell me where my wrists are, then.



So it sounds like I’m

Stuck. I’m too good at life to feel depressed, but



Here it is, like a medal that finds itself on my neck every morning

Heavy on my ribcage.


It's either crippling sadness or abnormal, sudden fits of joy.

No balance yet. Furrowing in the middle is messy.



Zero friends. No boyfriend.

So bored. For the first time ever



I laughed while jerking off

Because what’s the point



Of pleasure.

Neverends, pleasure.



I open an unread book, then I

Close. Open another. Close again



Watch TV for a while

Wash my face



Look at old photographs of

My mother.



There’s this one. Me, a child.

My mouth singing to her hairbrush, pretending it's a mic.


Then another, me about to

Eat cake



And my mother

In work clothes



Smiling for the picture, cutting

The cake. I wonder how



Much she bought it for at the time.

I wonder



What people thought in the ‘90s

When they see a girl with short hair



Bringing cake home, holding

It by the string, suspended



Like a present.

It’s a nice photo.



It’s one of the nicest photos

I’ve seen of my mother.



Today the sun is out

For a while.



Maybe sunlight can help

Me feel anything



Other than dread.

I lust. I falter.



I put the junk food foils in the trash.

I feed the birds and, I praise



The Lord.

Sorry, lord



The breadth of your kingdom

Is lost in plain, bored me.