Midnight train barreling past
what once was oak and magnolia,
now a smattering of stumps, resigned,
drumming the regular (fog)horn
into the haze of passing time:

"I am coming.

I am going.

I will not stop."

I watch and wonder how I too
was so quick to yell "Timber!"
and fall onto the tracks.

The sirens
are screaming.
The dogs are singing too.
While worlds outside are fleeing reality,
totality of being reduced to our five rooms and me and you,
we re-honeymoon.

I'm handling an unprecedented change
– in modern times, anyways –
with much more elegance
(or at least competence)
than I would have guessed.
I'm much too stressed to properly introspect,
but I'm occasionally caught questioning if this is the greatest story of my time –
if I should really be hiding out
(crying and nursing a Modelo and lime)
or out finding what our story is
and documenting it for those who come after this – if anything comes after this.


We're all just a bunch of kids
standing on the beach
with the waves crashing on us,
all ******* undertow:
sea salt and ocean spray.
Child's play drowned
under the realization
that nature is so ******* big
and that we are so miniscule
in retrospect:
how can humanity,
practiced at circumventing empathy,
come together to weather this calamity?
Is this just an illness
or a symptom of a sickness
that's been waiting to arrest our
brutish tresspassing
since we stole our first trembling breaths
and didn't give them back?

The softness of your belly under my wandering fingertips,
humble slumbering sounds bubbling up like prosseco –
a thundering giant reduced to a mess of blankets
and breath warm over bristling hairs.
It's time to join you there,
in sleep.

I forgot to not give my mistakes a name
and I left a bowl of food out for them
so now I'm ****** because I'm attached
to the idea of what I could have been.

Is it a sin to crave redemption or, at best, a reset button
if I can't recall a recent time I liked who I've grown into?
I'm digging, fingers bloodied, in the dirt to find something alive or otherwise worth reviving,
but these old bones are just about ready to give up the ghost this time.
On my tombstone, please inscribe "they tried."

I am not a goddess.
Sometimes I'm not as modest
as I would like to be.
The tallest buildings
have the farthest to fall.

I remedy holistically,
take vegan vitamin d3,
liberally diffuse tea tree.

Seasonal depression ***** when you have the regular kind too.
I'm scared of all the classes I'll sleep through,
or instead lie in agony,
agonists halted temporarily,
as the darkness takes my day
from me.

Electric spark seething, gas stove leaking, dial emergency hotline, radio silence, hang up, I'm fine.
We have take-off.
Confined at the exhaustive edge of a panic attack,
I trail the menstrually-stained duvet I bought for us at Ikea behind my trembling heels
as I arrive to stand over you in the living room
and watch you sleep on the International Orange love seat
your mother gave us when we moved in together.
It hurts to think you loved and lusted before our universe came to be,
the flame lit under my lungs reigning supreme
over the way you look at me every day, if only for a moment.
I turn off the harsh florescents
casting unfriendly shadows
from the back of my head
and revolve innumerable times
as I lie helpless in your pull,
a gravitational force luring me
to softly run my fingertips
across the nape of your neck,
where the hair I helped shave off last week is beginning to sprout up again, bristling.
I drop to my knees, dumbfounded by the duality of this moment, our togetherness permeated
by an occasional snore indicating that you still sleep in peace
while I agonize that you would ever stop loving me,
the NASA documentary we watched before you dozed off
overriding our perfect display of domestic tranquility with

CHALLENGER,
COLUMBIA,
APOLLO ONE.