My room, the suite, seemed too small.
I felt like I’d been in my room forever.
I’d developed a scratchy sense of stuckness
and a fresh, itchy awareness of dust particles
floating in the stifling, still air that made me
want to stop breathing in so much.

But I didn’t, categorically, have the energy
to get up and focusing seemed like a lot of effort.
I had a big midterm test, first thing this morning
and it laid me to waste, mentally. I think I did well
but it was a feat. Whenever I feel lifeless and weak,
I start to fear I’m coming down with something.

But then, everyone’s tired. The suite seems unnaturally
quiet, as if no one even has the energy to command
our ever-listening AI to play a playlist, so silence
ruled by exhausted default. It’s as if a low-pressure area had
descended to hold off a brush of refreshing ozone and rain.

Could I rouse my posse of symbiotic sort-of siblings
for an outing somewhere - like Toad’s bar - just across the street?
My door was open, so I called out, rather weakly, “Let’s go out!”
Someone, (Lisa sprawled out on the red corduroy couch?)
groaned listlessly from the common area. “My treat!” I updogged.

Five minutes later, it was showers all around. I love a good shower.
A shower’s where I ponder over the big questions, because
answers seem to come quickly there. I imagine I’d be wise
beyond words if I had a house with a waterfall running through it,
like one of those amazing, Frank Loid Wright masterpieces.
.
.
Songs for this:
The Duke Is Gone by Chuck Senrick
Cannock Chase by Labi Siffre

Sometimes the weight of waiting
Overwhelms me down to despair
When the world is moving so fast
My waiting feels like wasting time
When the winter season lingers long
When dry, decay, death dance dread
My soul becomes weary wanting out
When questions remain unanswered
Inviting more pain, doubt, desolations
Waiting feels like a slow stuckness

When I turn my eyes toward my heart
I notice the yeast rising in the darkness
Slowly, unhurried, directed by stillness
Time is transformed becoming a midwife
No longer the hurried fast train conductor
I settle slowly into an unfamiliar rhythm
Into a divine soul adjusted time
Inviting me to come in step by step
Deeper deeper into the dark night
Only when I surrender to waiting
Only then I see the distant light

Float me away
On a pile of flying leaches
Dissolve my edges
With acid made of clouds

The stuckness of my heart
Pulls on my veins
Pumping black tar around my bones

The crickets in my ears
Never shut up
Static attacks my cells
Happiness is just a game.

Why do I trip and fall into shame so easily?
I wonder if there is something in me that says:
“Feel ashamed and you will be better.”
But focusing on my limitations and failures
shouldn’t be such a regular habit.
They say that there’s two kinds of shame:
healthy and toxic.
But both of them feel sucky.
It’s healthy to realize I’m not God
and to accept my limitations
Toxic is staying stuck
in that hopelessly defective thought.
This stuckness has a thick cloud of darkness
surrounding it – gripping me.
I guess what people call faith is knowing
there’s always light outside and inside me
if I but look for it
believe in it.

This tentative reaching will be no more
than a grain of sand, perhaps, slipping down
betwixt fingers to beaches of hurried
memories, harmless until they bury
with heavy forced devotion all of you—
save for parts that until seconds ago were
deemed central, the sun beating a red hue
into skin; sinking, painful, just like your
moments where silence would seep in, demand
all attention, peel off into the sand
and wait there— a stranger with untrained eyes
might even mistake this instance as sweet,
or honest, sincere, and see the laughter
from children toeing the line between wet
heavy clumps of smooth celerity and
the blistering stuckness of the past as
almost holy; smelling saltwater now,
every laugh you hear holds a bit of fear
that all breath and blood will be lost. The tide
gifts the world with its imperfect motion
and still you hope. Maybe now you will not
drown.