Ten Poems in Twenty Minutes: COVID Edition Day 3

these have a distinctly romantic bent for which i cannot explain

1:
I’m a memory you don’t use to make decisions anymore.
I saw her, she looks just like me,
Was it that I was your type, just my personality didn’t fit?
I knew we wouldn’t work.
It doesn’t mean I didn’t want it.
You said you didn’t want that –
That life –
The one woman, living with you, loving you,
With you.
I said I needed to be able to be put first, and that couldn’t happen because of your kids.
You said, I want to be able to go with the flow and live in the moment.
I guess, it was my fault, taking you for your word.
I broke you up, got you back together, what will happen the next time we talk?
Will you remember to call on our birthday?

2:
How are you actually supposed to tell people how you feel?
This must have been some magical lesson y’all were taught in kindergarten.
And now we tell Tommy that what he did hurt our feelings and ask him not to do it again.
How do I say to this boy, hey, I have stronger feelings for you than I thought I would.
They caught.
How do people bring these things up in the moment?
Can you really tell people they made you angry? I’ve never seen it work. I have no modeling.
I’ll just keep guessing. But I feel like I’m buzzing around a bug zapper, waiting to get hit with electricity when I make the wrong move.

3:
64 ounces of soap.
That is how much came in the mail today.
Since April 27th I’ve known we were running low.
I looked for low-shipping local soap companies, liquid, of course, it has to be liquid.
I found online bulk retailers, I could buy a pallet of soap, shipping incld, not that expensive, really.
Finally, Monday, I was adding mustard seed to my grocery store online cart that now acts as my reminder list, and I saw it.
Two-pack Softsoap refill, free two-day delivery $8.94.
And it came in the mail, wrapped in overly large, unbranded ziploc baggies.
My soap. It came in the mail.
I called my mother,
Mom, I got more soap.

4:
Editing essays of folks who say they’re great writers.
I texted my friend applying for grad school, engineering management.
Hey, quit using adjectives. I have to cut the part where you say “I’m a succinct writer.”
I told him in the first round, tell me a story.
He said okay.
I told him in the second round, an essay should be supporting a main point. If your paragraphs are not supporting the main point …
Suddenly I was talking to my 8th graders, my tutoring students.
Why do we never learn the fundamentals?
Why do engineers never learn humility, clarity, or empathy?
Why can my 13 year olds not remember how to structure a paragraph for an essay?
Why don’t I remember I’m supposed to be full of coddling, even when they ask me for editing help?

5:
There’s a power dynamic issue, when one half of a friendship is in love with the other.
I left it with him, to decide if he wants to be my friend.
But I drew the boundaries.
I said I cut myself off from feeling anything toward you a long time ago.
He said he thinks that’s impossible,
Saying instead you know how I feel,
But never spelling it out like you want him to.

6:
I want to cry alone in a sound-proof room,
Feeling bad for Stevie Nicks in Silver Springs.
That’s what I’d do if I were alone.
I wouldn’t have to explain the way we use curse as a verb in America.
I could leave my room without someone saying my name.
I would wear my silvery, sparkly, somewhat dangerous top all day, because it’s shiny and it makes me happy.
But, look, I wouldn’t do any of those things if I were alone. I’d find another blocker excuse to stop me from living how I wanted. Today, I’m just using the stay-at-home orders trapping my roommate and I together.

7:
I returned a 23 palms shirt to the UPS store.
I sent emails to ads on craigslist about apartments in Washington.
I called the insurance company to fix the double claim that was denied falsely.
I made my bed, called my mother, took a shower, and put a sprig of rosemary in my hair I stole off a bush I passed while I was walking by.
These are the things I did today. I will not think more than one hour ahead.
Today I do one thing at a time.
I will now go make a playlist of music to listen to in the car tomorrow.
Notice how I hamper my own planning and future analysis brain, but I get stuff done for now.

8:
My body is smaller than it was in college,
I can see a vein in my neck now,
Feel a collarbone under my tapping.
My thighs, I’ve measured are still the same size, 24.5 inches.
My roommate told me that I’m melting.
I feel like I was supposed to look like this all along, and I’ve been hurting my body for all the things I imagined I did wrong.
There are wrinkles now around my eyes, without the fat to fill them in. And there are hip bones I forgot could close drawers.
But I still don’t know how to dance. And I still can’t do anything right.

9:
I told my therapist,
My dad said something I think you’ll think is funny.
I told him, my dad, when he asked how I used the money he sent me last week,
I said oh I’m using it to pay my therapist.
He said, so I’m literally paying for my mistakes.
I laughed.
He said, what would have been funnier is if you would have said, no for that you’d need to be paying more.
We laughed.
I’ve never seen my therapist laugh so hard, so unexpectedly.

10:
He texted, asking how I was.
I responded, and asked the same. To only receive a one-word reply.
I warned him, I’m calling you if you don’t give me anything.
So we sat on the phone for an hour.
And I oddly felt nothing but friend affection. A minor tug when he told me about another woman, how he’s going to focus on work again.
And I told him how I’m having trouble sharing.
It felt like we were friends again.
Like he made me promise,
When I made an off-color joke after he texted me for the first time in months,
Either drunk off his ass or sober, I’m not sure which is worse, he said, let’s always be friends.
I said pinky promise.
This is one of those ones where I want to read ahead in the chapters of life to see how we end, if we’re still friends in five years, or if I’ve forgotten his name, and I’m not sure where he lives.

Ten Poems in Twenty Minutes: COVID Edition Day 2

these are not as good as the last bunch. but they’re here.

1:
Today, once again,
I sat at my laptop and stared at my screen.
I should start that project.
I should at least plan the project.
If I sit here long enough, the fear might go away,
Then I can take a baby step toward completing the project.
I need to be okay feeling this feeling,
It’s okay.
We’re in a pandemic, it’s okay.
You gave yourself this deadline.
You can do the work by then.
But I know, it’ll be Sunday night, and I will have beat myself up for not getting work done, again,
But,
I will have finished another novel,
Because there’s nothing as good as reading when you’ve got something, really, you’re supposed to be doing.

2:
I said to my roommate that I was going to sit with a suicidal friend.
This was a lie.
In fact, I was sneaking off to a boy’s house.
So I could hug someone.
And not be told to eat something,
Or offered coffee I can’t drink.
I wanted social time,
Not this limbo between no alone time and no people time.
That’s what it feels like with a roommate you don’t really like.
I’m always assailable but never purposefully seeking company.

3:
I got a sunburn.
On Sunday.
I put sunscreen on my face and the front of my neck.
I low-key wanted to get a tan.
To prove I still can.
And to show off my slightly less jiggly body with proof I got it in the sunshine.
Instead I got a sunburn on the back right of my shoulder.
And I’m sleeping on my one side.
And smelling like the green burn cream aloe lotion.
My roommate told me, she didn’t know my skin was so sensitive.
When she came into my room at 11 p.m. to “hang with you.”
But she wishes she was as white as me so she could dye her hair copper.
And other things I can’t make up.

4:
My friend.
I like friends. I like having friends. It makes me feel nice and fluffy inside.
Look at me, family, I can do what you can’t!
I can have lasting friendships.
She’s having a hard time.
And I want to go and sit with her.
But I can’t.
Same as last week. The risk is too high and she’s too immunocompromised.
If she dies though, I’ll feel so guilty.

5:
My appetite is back.
So I made the only mac and cheese they had at the store,
Which is the gluten-free kind full of words like non-gmo and happy looking lambs and things.
I found the way to make it better,
Was to add small pieces of chopped deli ham I had fried in butter and kosher salt.
I could eat it then.
This is what I’ve been sharing at work, with my friends,
With family who call.
We’ve been talking about the food we make,
And the tricks we’ve learned.
It somehow feels belittling and I don’t know why,
To only talk of food,
And the food I make.
Belittling maybe, in that I think these people only think of me in terms of food.

6:
My lovely therapist lady suggested I talk to my dad about how I’m feeling.
It went badly to say the least,
But I did learn how hard it is to be on the other end of the behaviors I have.
The talking about emotions from some distant third-party line,
The switching gears,
The over-definition of terms and abstraction of whatever it is you’re feeling,
So you don’t have to feel it.
The sense that when you’re sharing it’s to as a supplicant to some gatekeeper,
Who will hold the pain for you.
It’s annoying. I do it too. It’s where I got it from.
Him.
At least now I know.
And I tried to share with a friend this week, how I was really feeling. Tried.

7:
I’ve started to hate the sounds of my footsteps on the pavement.
That’s how much I’m walking.
But it does tired me out.
So I can sleep.
Then push next on my alarm three times.
And move from the bed to the chair to do work.
Where I pretend things matter,
And in fact,
All I’m thinking about is how I’m still waiting for someone to save me.
This time it’s a magical vaccine that will make me have this beautiful life again,
That I don’t think would fit me anymore.

8:
I had a lawyer draft a whole estate plan,
Including contingencies and everything.
Paid up front.
And then haven’t been able to read the edits to the documents and sign off on them.
My mom told me today, her life insurance is good until she’s 66.
And one of the policies goes to her kids, instead of her husband.
She said, that’s where the money for my funeral will come from.
My investment account made $350 dollars since I opened it.
Dead people’s money.
It feels like dead people’s money.
It feels like everything I pay for now has blood on its hands.

9:
A book made me laugh so hard, I remembered what it is to laugh.
The sound caught me off guard.
Is that me?
Is that what I sound like?
All that rust?
She was just describing something funny about Seattle city planning.
It wasn’t that funny, reading it the second time.
And I comfortably shift back down,
Into my “I’ve seen everything old-internet veteran” mode.
Safe again, from my own smile.

10:
I shut off my phone to disconnect.
Maybe re-center.
And as I was waiting for the screen to go full dark,
I picked up my work phone,
And started scrolling.
What new habits will come from this?
Will I always have a switch that can be flipped now, that remembers,
You have to stay six feet away from them.
They’re too close.
Don’t breathe their air.