Saturday alone on a love seat
for two with my roommate
plucking away at twisted nickel
across the room.

Unshowered, unmotivated,
a maybe Monday.

My clean laundry's a footrest
for ***** feet fresh off the
almost autumn asphalt.
Come visit us.

Be unshowered and unmotivated
on this maybe Monday.

Don't worry, the door's unlocked.
There's just a few hundred
flamingos waiting to get in,
but they should move

at the sound of your unshowered,
unmotivated, maybe Monday footsteps

Three weeks ago, I saw my aunt without a wedding ring and her baby, Abigail, without a clue.

The questions that were fired at my mother after she delivered the news to me formed a ball in my throat the next time my aunt explained why Uncle Charlie wasn't at a family party.

I know my own vision was blurred but I saw every pair of eyes turn towards Abigail.
She was smiling over a bowl of chips.

My aunt hugged me goodbye loosely and although she probably needed me to pull tighter, I couldn't without thinking of his suffocating hugs.
Maybe she would feel the same.

My brain still houses a jumbled combination of every rare word whispered about it.
My stomach contorts as my grandparents fear his presence to pick up his daughter the way I now fear my own family for being so ridiculous.
He isn't dangerous.
He didn't do anything wrong.
They fell out of love (apparently).
Everything takes two.

How can they welcome a person in to the family then reject him without remorse?

My heart is sore every passing day I'm reminded that Abigail is only one years old.
I want to catch her tears when Mommy leaves her for weeks at a time the way her two front teeth catch her tongue when she tries to pronounce my name.
I want to make sure she fully understands what love is before she experiences heartbreak.
I want her first broken heart to happen when she's sixteen and the first people she learned to love to not be the culprits.
I want everyone else to stop denying the fact that she definitely has an idea about what's going on.

When my aunt and uncle told my Grandmother they needed to talk, she clapped and asked for the due date.
I sat in my bed upon finding out with that same shock,
subconsciously numbering each couple of the family in order of most likely to be divorced.
Guess who was in last place.

Their wedding replays in my memory alongside the effortless conversations with my uncle I now long for more than ever.

I worry about him.
I worry about her.
I worry about Abigail. Everyone does.

Because she sings the closing Barney song on repeat for a family who provides forced smiles framed with bitten lips.
Because I don't ever want her to think she should stop singing.

Three weeks ago, I saw my aunt without a wedding ring and her niece with a new fear.

Tonight, I didn't feel welcome in my own living room
And as I sat staring at the stained carpet of my bedroom,
I didn't think of that but of the people who never do.
If I could remove my heart to go out to them
To maybe help them feel full again, I would.
Because exclusion is the least comfortable sweater
And it scratches hard when family members become the stitching.

Three days until I leave home for Lycoming.
Three years until I leave Lycoming forever,
but it will never leave me.

I've packed away clothes, textbooks, my laptop,
chargers, and two skateboard decks.
But I still can't find my television cable.

Microwave, ballpoint pens, notebooks,
soap, shampoo, posters, contacts,
a rug, and a love seat for two or three.

Everything I need is clustered in the corner
of the living room, weighing on the 20th
century hardwood floorboards.

I only left my journal out.
I still have a few things to remember
before all the evergreens turn to brick buildings.

I really do judge
what I write as I write it.
Childish, boastful, self-
absorbed, morbid, pathetic,
simple-minded. You
know, the works. We all have to
be critical in
life or nothing is sacred.
N o t h i n g
m a t t e r s .
Everything will exist and
it won't mean a ****
thing.

Every flower in a fenced
flowerbed only has a few
petals to pick from until
you're climbing up
the stem like an elevator
that can only jump floors
so many times before
it gets stuck on a chained
bench with a cinder block
back and a $1,000 bail.
Maybe after a few nights,
I'll spar with the cast iron
bars 'til one of them falls
like the petals from my thin
fingers to the sidewalk.

My right thumb dove from my pitcher
into a man's water glass, soaking his napkin
and place mat. He pulled away from his mug
of Labatt Blue, lips curling the caramel color
back past his picket fence teeth. Like his wife's
diamond ring, she was turned away.
Her face was illuminated by her phone.
Sharon's back with Tom?

Shoot me.

He slid his chair back, legs scraping
the floorboards like a car accident. He stood
a decent four inches taller than me.
Chevrolet was printed across his faded
t-shirt, and his boots hit the floor like mallets
when he stepped. The pitcher in my grip shook
like the Titanic capsizing. This man was the iceberg;
**I was the captain panicking behind the wheel.

Modern and Contemporary Poetry
takes up most of the passenger seat.
Pages' edges ruffled like the balled-up polo I'm wearing. Tommy Hilfiger'd
be rolling in his millions. Twenty minutes till work's screen door crashes on the frame twice before settling. Three salad plates, a skillet, and two jars of unsweetened tea condensate
on the metal counter. They soak dinner bills and paper towel coasters.
The front door vacuum seals behind sandal families reeking of Chlorine
and hairspray. Beachy look. Three more families crowd in behind them, taking turns sifting through the hostess desk peppermints for discarded toothpicks. Reservations for 7:00 come in at 6:50 and demand a table. They're  just like the mints packed tightly
in the lobby, but there are a few patient ones at the bottom.  They're the ones that inspire stanzas in **Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the college textbook waiting on my passenger seat. *Three more hours.

Like her husband, Claire's wineglass
left rings on the table. Her coarse
hair stuck to her thin, oxblood lips.
She found time to breathe in between
sips and dry coughs brought on by her friend,
John, smoking on the couch. He put his Pall Malls
out on the armrest like Dalmatians. Her sister
lay in a red wine carpet stain counting
the pennies behind John's feet.
Claire hid behind a fruit bowl;
oranges with skin far tighter than hers.
*Oranges her husband would've been glad to ****.