Due tomorrow:
Lab report
Argumentative essay
Group project
39 textbook pages
I can do this.
Get some coffee and caffeine
Lock the door and close the windows
Put on those sound-blocking earbuds
FOCUS
Keep in mind the future good grade.

One day I rode upon an Autumn train.
The sky was slate, the wind was cold and blue.
I saw stark trees and brilliant leaves and rain,
and yet I only thought again of you.
I'd come out on this trip to hide myself.
I thought I'd not be found right in plain sight.
Music I had, and earbuds from the shelf,
I soothed myself with them all through the night.
And when the morning came, all cloudy cold;
all still and sad and broken I became.
For in my heart, I'd suddenly grown old
and all I'd left to whisper was your name.
I droppped my hat down low upon my eyes,
and hid in Love's most distressing disguise.

Small, red transporters to another world
One doesn't even work
But they work well enough
Earbuds in, world out
Forget it all for a while
A little piece of rhythmic heaven
Claimed to calm a restless soul

Shoutout
To my **earbuds
For being there
When no one else was

Thank you
For keeping me alive
When I craved death

When I saw nothing but hate
You gave me true love

And thank you
For helping me build my wall

My sadness gets up at 2:00 am
Then again at 4:00
And 5:30
And 6:45
Then 7:00am

After the snooze alarm goes off
My sadness wears concealer and mascara to make it
feel awake
and pretty

My sadness hides behind a joke, a smile, a laugh
My sadness is scared of my happiness, who
Stops by once in a while
but just for a quick hello

My sadness doesn’t show through the way
I pull myself together in the morning like nothing is wrong
Or when people ask “how are you?” And replies “I’m good!”
People don’t see my sadness in the stories I tell,
the schoolwork I do, the advice I give them for their problems

My sadness doesn’t show up like other’s sadness
It doesn’t hold its head down in the hallway,
or sleep in until 12, it doesn’t go days without eating,
and it doesn’t try to keep happiness in a locked door

No.

My sadness only shows through the poetry I write
The music behind my earbuds
The short stream of tears when the doors are
closed and the windows are open hoping that just one
small bit of happiness will come inside and stay for longer
than a joke, a laugh, a smile.

My sadness stays in the shower longer than usual,
gets angry a little too easily, and cries a little too much
when watching The Notebook.
It doesn’t look like sadness or walk like sadness or talk like sadness
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t sadness.

No.

You can’t see my sadness.
It doesn’t show like a person with a
broken leg and crutches
You don’t take one look at it and know that
It is crippled and broken down

No.

My sadness is like cancer
You don’t know it’s there until you strip me down
peel back the layers of my skin
to see that I’ve been breathing an air like smoke
that’s caused a growth in my lungs and heart so
that each breath I take, each drop of blood that flows
through my veins feels like a weight on my chest that
can only be lifted with you laying beside me and holding
me until I feel as light as a feather souring through the wind
after finally break free of its bird. Its burd-en.
The thing that’s been holding it down, keeping it from doing
the impossible. But, possibly you can’t lift that weight.
possibly it’s only me that can lift that weight.

Possibly it’s been me the whole time.
Possibly I am the one that kicks happiness out the door
When it stops by because I don’t see happiness
Without you here
But how dare I place the image of happiness
Only in your presence when happiness can fall
In from any joke, or laugh, or smile
And happiness can stay past the sunset
Because you can still see happiness when all you feel
Is the darkness
Happiness can come in when the door
Is bolted shut because happiness doesn’t
Ask if it can come over
Happiness waltzes right in, unannounced, but
Always welcome.
So the next time my sadness is sitting at the table
And we are having a cup of coffee,
And happiness runs through the door
I will show sadness the exit
And then turn to happiness and say “it is great to
See you, please stick around for a while.”
And later when it gets up to leave
I will grab it by the arm and hold
onto it tighter than you ever held me.

You’re a Monday child, born on the first day of the week--
the weakest link--
You’re like the moon.
You’ve got nothing to give--
the sharp darkness of your crescent is someone else’s shadow,
and your light is nothing but the reflection of something bigger
and brighter than you.
You’re a disappointment child,
potential building like the Tower of Babel,
everyone telling you that if you had just tried hard enough,
then you could have touched God.
But you’re just a Monday child,
an extrovert who runs up the electricity bill by leaving on
all the lights when you’re home alone,
how even with your earbuds in you leave the TV on.
Pretending to be near people who are alive makes you feel a little less like you
already died a long time ago.
Darkness doesn’t take days off and
neither do your thoughts, so
wrap yourself in stars.
You want to find light in the constellations but
it’s hard to trace lines between dots behind fog.
Mondays are longer on Mars.
You were born with stress in your veins, heaping projects with no real due date,
in a constant state of waiting for Friday,
but weekends are for the weary,
and the taut line of your spine implies that you
don’t deserve a break.
The thing about Mondays is that they’re crushing,
filled with longing,
the way that you only feel homesick when you look up at the moon and her fraud light.
You wrap yourself in nebulae and galaxies to try to
keep the homesickness at bay while you sleep.
Nothing will ever be good enough.
You will never be good enough.
You are a Monday child, a bitter aftertaste of someone else’s loss,
like you’ve smiled too brightly at a stranger leaving a funeral home.
You dug your own grave a long time ago.
Your eyes are clouded with looking too far forward, stretching yourself backwards,
hanging onto the aftertaste of the weekend while living for the next.
You hang like laundry,
brittle in cold wind,
the step between that no one likes to linger on.
You were born on a Monday.
But your eighteenth birthday fell on a Wednesday,
your sixteenth on a Sunday,
and you are more than a desperate reach for empty space.
The Tower of Babel did not touch God.
You are not here for someone else to tell you to touch God.
You are not here for someone else.
You may be a disappointment child,
with your Monday fog eyes and shaking hands,
but sometimes you have to choose your own joy over someone else’s expectations--
because I was born on a Monday,
and poetry comes easier than physics but nothing
calms me down quite like solving differential equations.
I was born on a Monday,
and I’m used to looking at other people’s faces and seeing disappointment
because I don’t think I'm quite what any of us wanted me to be.
I cling to the past the way that Monday clings to Sunday,
but daydream about the future like it’s Saturday.
The problem is Tuesday through Friday, because
nothing quite makes me want to die like the concept of
planning out the rest of my life.
I think I’ll be alright, though,
because on Monday nights I look at the stars and think that
I might be figuring out how to feel alive,
like maybe home is in the constellations that I still don’t quite know.
Maybe home is in the Mondays,
or maybe it’s in the weary camaraderie of humanity’s ability to cling to weekdays.
Most days, I have to remind myself that this is just the beginning,
simultaneously relieving and daunting,
because I’m scared of the future and I’m scared of being disappointing.
I’m a Monday child, born under a full moon that feels like home
whether I’m looking at it from Jamaica or Germany or Kansas City.
Chaos comes with the start of the week,
and losing myself has always felt comforting:
that’s the only time when I have no one else to be.

I was asked today "what
are you really into?"
while I was walking to film
class.

He had changed direction
with a flair of drama
and was walking along,
interrogating me.

I had to think.

I wondered how
I would answer his
question, were it posed
by someone I was interested in.

"I like the smell of hormones
colliding, omnipotent in their
decision to do so and in doing
it."

Could I say that?

"I like to feel like a hormone,"
or
"I like being a hormone."
Were these answers?

"I like patting my contracted
******* against the *****
majora of my partner."

"I like sewing," I might say.

That is, the idea
that if I push
and she opens
both testicles
and ******* may pop inside.

Like a **** needle pulling
a ***** thread
through a tight weave.

I laugh, imagining what the little man
would say, but
he doesn't know why.

"Stitch her up, Doctor!"

I'm
laughing.

He just says "you know, I'm into
chemistry, biology. Just tell me what
you're into."

I've been silent.
Is he still walking with me?

All I think to say is
"music" pointing to the earbuds
dangling over my chest, song
interrupted
by his pedantry.

He says "you've always liked music"
as if we've had this conversation before.
As if we know each other.
And it seems like he will follow me
to class.
And sit by me.
And talk about chemistry
and biology
while we discuss Singin' in the Rain.

Hormones, sewing and music.

Sept. 29th, 2014
Is combing and brushing your eyebrows in the morning.
It's leaning on the cold car window with earbuds
and as the last notes play, thinking
"Please don't make this a happy song
I don't deserve a happy song."
It's seeing ads for a clearance sale
plastered on a store that almost never is occupied
and seeming to just know that it's
it's subtle way of going out of business.
It's knowing and not believing.
It's breaking out in a cold sweat when you finish a book.
It's wishing I could go home
and lie on my carpet
and peel all my skin off
then crawl back inside
and maybe feel comfortable this time.