Ten Poems in Twenty Minutes: COVID Edition Day 4

these are personal not political, but don’t think the politics aren’t there

1:
It happened and I’m mad my mother was right.
I saw a baby and I wanted one so badly I cried.
I rocked myself, and I cried.
I was happy there was still a very small chance,
Even though it would upend my life,
I planned for it anyway.
So I could daydream,
About what I wanted, for once.
It’s pure want.

2:
It hasn’t even been a week,
And I’ve already had an offer.
That I shouldn’t take.
I shouldn’t take,
I shouldn’t take.
But I want someone to not have put me in a category of “not good enough”
Like, why wouldn’t that hurt my feelings?
Why do you even have a “not good enough to love” space?
I could have been at his house, with his cats,
Not being alone, saying screw covid, but being treated honestly for who I am,
And not playing this –
You’re good to be casual for now, but not enough to make me care about you, or try to make you feel good.
But I’d have the testing fears all over again, are we clean?

3:
My grandmother only approved of my mother’s husband after she’d had dementia for 3 years.
She also put whole grapes in her rice krispies.
Hand washed the plastic cover over her regular table cloth,
And collected tea cups even though she drank coffee.
But there I was on a Saturday, sitting on my friend’s couch, missing her.
Missing her not being alive.
And sad, because I realized I’m still at the start of missing people, I’ll just keep losing more people the longer I’m around, and I haven’t been around long at all yet.

4:
Weird thing happened.
I said, I’d turned off my feelings for him,
To him.
Directly.
Which was a lie. Then.
But today, it wasn’t a lie.
I didn’t feel anything but sympathy for him.
Sympathy that you have to live in such strict boxes, with so much fear.
Where you don’t think you’ll work with someone long-term, but you get along well enough to limp along, for a bit, to stave off loneliness.
I’m worried my mood will change and my feelings with it. Again.
I’m worried I’ll retaliate and hold myself off, because he’s doing the same.
Tit for tat. Dumb way to play with people.

5:
I invited him on my birthday trip.
Maybe that will be the next and last time we’re together.
And it will all be about me.
He’s the free add-on that I won’t take into consideration.
I’ll be the one laying on the floor communing with the moon.
He doesn’t get a say in where we stay.
He’s allowed to bring the dog.
I turn my phone off for three days and embrace the thoughts that come,
Which are usually, mostly, anxiety. But it’s nice to have it in a new place.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t end up coming, like the boy last year.
But I’ll get that beautiful drive by myself again, and it won’t matter,
Because it’s about me.

6:
500g bread flour
Why do you still love me?
350g water,
I’m writing this down, I promise,
No, see I’m taking notes.
Add 1/8th tsp yeast.
You told me you can’t say no to me.
Mix.
Turn.
Let stand 30-40 minutes.
Does that mean I can ask you for things?
Add 50g water.
15g salt.
Mix again.
You’re not supposed to flirt with me anymore.
Turn.
Wait 30-40 minutes and turn again.
Rise overnight on the counter.
Tell me why you love me.
Stretch out in the morning.
450 on a convection oven.
Tell me again I’m pretty,
Before I forget we said we wouldn’t do this anymore.
No, no, you only bake it 10-12 minutes.

7:
It’s me and the snails on the sidewalk at midnight when the weather has dropped below 90 and I can walk.
Me and the snails and the toads and the roaches on the sidewalk at midnight.
Flowers growing into the path,
Running into one-line spider webs,
Listening to podcasts,
Talking to my mother,
Tracking my distance, donating 25c a mile.

8:
Why can’t I be weak and still loved?
Why is all I do defend my right to be vulnerable,
To carry my trauma,
To have not had experiences,
To be uncomfortable.
To ask you not to say those things or use those words.
Right as you’re walking away.

9:
Is that what you do brain?
I finally give you some calm, some space, you’ve been having a nice time exploring,
And you give me unprocessed trauma,
You throw the boy’s words back in my face,
The idea that I should deal with the trauma, that there’s something wrong with me?
That it’s not okay I’m not at 100%?
It’s not fair.
I give you space and you give me more to deal with.

10:
He came over to pick up some candy I made.
And he didn’t leave.
I wasn’t expecting him to stay.
Had no beer to offer.
No nuthin.
I stayed six feet away.
The first hint of hey I have things to do, I thought would make him go,
But it didn’t.
He said something interesting,
He said I stack up better than anyone else they’ve ever been with,
Better job,
In better shape,
Better educated,
Better beard.
(Apparently that’s a type he told me)
Nothing about who he is as a person, which is all I care about right?
But he thinks of himself in these measurable terms,
Am better than.

Ten Poems for August

1:
I’m sorry I haven’t written,
I’m sorry I’m not enough.
There was too much,
And I was not enough.
Whatever you want to say,
The answer is that I’m sorry.
Not that I’ll do better,
But that I would like you to know I feel guilt,
The kind of guilt one feels when someone likes you but you’re already involved with someone else.
No that’s not right, because I love you all.
Which is why I’m sorry.

2:
She’s still alive.
My grandmother is still alive.
She’s recovered from kidney failure stage four, pneumonia, malnutrition,
They’re taking her off hospice.
Two weeks they told us at Christmas.
What is she playing at, living through the pain as usual, determined to cause as much harm as possible.
Making a caretaker for life out of my mother who has better things to do.
She needs to die. Her brain has huge black swaths.
Also I want to eat the food at her funeral, I helped plan the menu.

3:
What will I call you when I forget my mind?
Will you be my sister?
Or my first boyfriend’s name?
Or nothing at all?
Who will you be to me when I can’t chew my food?

4:
It decided to all catch up with me today,
I finally got enough sleep,
Or sat still long enough,
For my brain to think.
It was all there waiting for me,
All the trauma, heartache, pain, agony, suffering, blah.
I’ll tell them to you one by one as I can. As I need to. As I can express.
I’ll verbally process on paper, talking to myself,
Wanting to have that perfect person that negates the need for all this explaining.

5:
I don’t know the pin number to my debit card.
And I have to buy a monthly bus pass for $41.25.
The money I saved in my little silver box has all been broken.
You have to enter a pin number to get cash at the grocery store.
I just got my new driver’s license, so I can’t write a check at the store to get the extra cash because the dln doesn’t match, so the machine won’t take it.
They won’t let you write a check for a bus pass.
My bank is back in my home state.
They need me to come into the bank to verify my identify, three thousand miles away.
I don’t have an account here, because I don’t have a permanent address here, because I’m living as a “guest” and I’m not on the lease.
So I don’t have checks that match my new license, so I can’t write a check to get cash back to pay for the bus pass.
They have a mobile app, but it doesn’t work on all the buses, and I don’t always have my phone charged.
My sister doesn’t have any spare cash I can pay her for later.
She tells me to go to an ATM.
I’ve never used an ATM, I tell her,
And her eyes bug out, but she doesn’t offer to help.

6:
I miss your old apartment,
That truly awful place.
Near Spiderhouse, west campus, off Guad, past 26th
I miss it now that you have a gate with a key code,
An apartment with white walls,
And no twindly staircase to a creaked, upper floor.
The times we played vr without room to turn around,
The snacks and sweaters in my little paper bags,
The way it smelled so terribly like you.
Your bed on the floor without sheets,
The heart murmur, the thighs, the ceiling-projected midnight movies,
I miss that I had hope back then, that you might want more,
That we could fit together.
That I would trust you enough to share my feelings,
That I hadn’t seen you snap at your kid’s mom.
When you would talk as much as I would,
And find me amusing instead of a thing to deal with,
When I could crash at your place after getting drunk at the bars downtown.
He said he didn’t want it to end, didn’t he?
When I told him someone else loved me now.
Funny, then, he never did a thing to keep me.

7:
I need to be someone’s first.
I can’t come second.
I want to be someone’s sun and moon and all the stars.
So, I won’t date you if you have kids,
Or if you’re in a living arrangement with your brother and ex-girlfriend who’s really more of a sister to you, who you haven’t slept with in three years, is coming third okay?
I can’t take being pushed aside for whatever it is that’s more important.
I want to be important. I want to be looked at, taken into consideration, important, recognized, give me validity you external sources.

8:
Let me go down the list of people I’ve failed,
Of promises I’ve broken to myself,
Commitments I’ve forgotten I’ve made,
Things I wanted so much to remember.
I cannot love myself for being human, I can barely love myself for being who I am.

9:
There aren’t any clouds in Texas.
Oh sure it rains, turns gray, and the sun disappears.
But where is my orange and purple?
Where are the dayends in a blaze of glory?
I want my feelings to be seen in the sky.
Those beautiful moving, sweeping, forces of nature.
There are no swirls, fluffs, miniature elephants, or dancing biscuit dough,
It’s clear, or it’s airplane stripes, or a gray you can’t see, deceiving all these southerners,
Making them think those painters are making it up,
Instead of barely capturing how beautiful it is where it’s not this damn hot.

10:
Leave him alone.
I must have spent the same amount of time thinking about texting him as I have actually spent with him.
I want him to plan things with me,
And take me seriously,
And like me.
He’s starting a new job, I should leave him alone.
He doesn’t care about me,
I’ll never see him again.
Even if my family did background research and really likes him.
What did I do wrong?
Was I not enough of myself?
Why doesn’t anyone love me?
Please, at least,
Don’t text him again, after this one.

Poems from My Day (2-27-17)

1:
I will not be jealous
It’s silly to be jealous
I can’t be this competitive
Love doesn’t work like this,
In measured ways.
We can all be friends,
I am not better or worse for being excluded.
I will not care that they’ve done something without me.
My abandonment issues will not make me weird.
I won’t play with people like this.

2:
I met a woman with three other friends
At a dive filipino place in southeast
And she was nice, kind
But either she didn’t want to be there,
Thought it would be different,
Or was on drugs.
I kept thinking, why was she here.
She writes though,
Which means she was absorbing everything,
To use later, without giving too much of herself away.

3:
Maya Angelou wrote this poem for people who have to be happy for work.
I think she’s right.
We’re all crying on the inside.
No wonder cannibalism has gone out of fashion,
We’re all dead inside.

4:
She said,
That’s why rape happens,
It’s why alaska’s rates are so high.
Because you have to be nice to the people you live with,
Or you don’t have a place to stay,
I have to be nice to her, Or.
She thought we were thick as thieves.
No.
She takes what she learns about you,
To use it against you, again and again.
Like the domestic violence,
And it happens and it happens,
And you watch it happen
All over again.
You do nothing to stop it for others,
Or yourself,
And you hate everything you are a little bit more.

5:
Tomorrow’s my last day
Tomorrow I can talk about politics
And not be a logo
And not answer to Jamie,
Or be penned in
Or have to wear a polo
I’m free
Gemma was right.
She kept telling me,
You’re almost done.
My head can’t comprehend

6:
How much of your village is native?
About 80% identify, but beyond that you get into percentages of people,
Which I’ve never really enjoyed.
I didn’t go into this thinking I’d be more comfortable around the brown people I see everyday,
Then a conference room of white.
I talked to the yupik lady from up north for too long, because she looked like my people.

Poems from My Day (11-29-16)

1:
17 days.
I get off this island in seventeen days.
I get to go home.
Where it’s not weird.
I shouldn’t say weird, I should say different than what I’m accustomed to,
Different from my culture.
But I can’t help it.
It’s weird.
And I want to go home.
Even if I hate that home.
I want to be where there are roads and stores and love
For Christmas.

2:
Today I am absurdist comedy.
We drove out the road,
With a hatchet and a flashlight
In the jeep with one loose door, mice in the back, and conspicuously wet seats,
To chop down a Christmas tree to put in a pickle jar.
We filled the jar with water and rocks and covered it with a red pillowcase from the back of my closet.
We put four hardback discarded library books underneath.
It was too wobbly.
We duct taped the pickle jar to the stack of books.
It leans now.
There’s one string of lights, in neon blue,
And four ornaments from the only store in town.
There’s a good chance the blind inbred dog will knock it over.
We were going to make halibut and muktuk for dinner.
Need help. Send wine.

3:
Yesterday, we met up with a reporter from the radio station an island over.
We were taking out our trash, which means a trip to the dump.
She was in the back. Listening with the tape recorder and her reporter mode on.
As we told our stories, about up north,
And we showed her the dump,
That gets set on fire every once in a while,
And burns a beautiful plastic.
Because you can’t recycle or barge it out here.

4:
They have basketball teams stay in the library.
Kids sleeping where the other school can put them.
For about two weeks, they either have games at home,
Or travel to the other small islands.
Two weeks they travel away from school.
The line the teachers give is,
What grade do you want them to have?
A we’ll do our own thing state for sure.

5:
I’m nervous talking to reporters.
If I lose my job,
I want it to be about something big n’ loud.
Not because I picked up a chair,
When I’m only supposed to do administrative work.

6:
I feel myself drawing away from him
And I don’t care.
I’ll be fine on my own.
I’ll sing Les Miz loudly and wear a beret to pretend.
Other people might make my life better,
But my pavement still shines like silver.

7:
I heard carol of the bells at the store today,
It reminded me of bell choir,
Of damping my middle c bell so hard I had a crescent bruise underneath my shoulder
Because Joanne never damped her b flat, and it would run, and sound terrible.
I remember going to her funeral thinking she died with orange hair in an afro.
I remember learning her sons had died before her in the war.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I just felt it, but I don’t know what to do with it.

Poems from My Day (6-28)

what’s my sin? i try so hard.

1:
My brain woke up today.
There are so many things to keep in mind when I’m having a conversation.
Or telling people what to do.
I can’t keep it straight.
Then I over eat to compensate.
It’s a protective shield.
If I don’t take care of myself,
No one has to talk to me.

2:
Trying to be interesting, and well read,
I’m up to number seven of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
So far,
I’ve gathered,
I’m supposed to have a child to pass on my beauty.
I must be missing something.

3:
In one of my potential conversations in my mind,
I have to explain my relationship to him.
We’re messed up in similar ways,
So we’re mutually supportive of our destructiveness. Together,
If you can get him on the line,
He’s a good source of predictability,
But he’s also one of the main reasons I won’t drink too much. He’s so close to what I am, it’s a reminder to do better. What a way to use him.

4:
Quit telling me how to feel or what to do
Just tell me what you want to tell me and get on with it.

5:
I can have a family? I can pick them out? I can choose?
I could have kids and a husband if I wanted and smoosh together in photos?
I could have that?
It makes me want to cry.
It seems so far away from the life I’ve known.

6:
A friend here on the island has a baby.
I’m becoming familiar to the intricacies of wails.
Someone else has a two-year-old and a five-year-old.
They’re around all day.
It’s,
Almost too much.
I don’t think I can deal with that,
Can I make that proclamation, or am I too young? No kids on my own.

7:
There was a woman, drunk
Outside the blue house across the way,
And her man, a man, I guess, was forcing her into the truck.
There were little kids.
Screaming, and she was beating the kid with her bag.
And yelling.
I felt so naïve.
What to do, what’s right? Why am I so upset? Why aren’t I more upset?
Why are they so casual about domestic violence here?

Poems from My Day (6-22)

no one makes me feel like a natural woman

1:
Kelly stood up at the little girl’s birthday party,
Inside the bunk house where the service group is staying for a month this summer.
He grabbed baby Helena from her Momma.
But effectively cut me off from my exits.
I had to mentally calm myself down, like I have to do on a plane.
He wasn’t trapping me. I could get out.
I wasn’t stuck.
I have to tell myself the same thing in my physical space as well as my headspace.

2:
Sometimes I like being around people I can’t read.
Get a read on a mean, like understand.
We’re on the same level.
But, when my brain is tired, it’s less work to be around less smart people.

3:
I don’t do well on my own.
I mean living alone.
Because I am now.
My roommate has fled for her summer teaching holiday back to her home.
I’m having to have a new experience each day.
I’m planning them.
So I don’t fall into the bad kind of depression.
The kind where I can’t leave my bed.
And no one will be there to judge me for it.

4:
There’s a woman here in town,
She’s a lot like me.
I dislike her.
But, because of the similarities between us, between who we are,
I feel like I’m disliking myself, by disliking her.
It makes me want to change.
Be less of a know-it-all,
She’s the sort of girl I avoided in college.
But, here, because everything’s so small, I can’t tell her how I really feel.

5:
It comes back when I’m uncomfortable.
I can’t stop smiling. There’s nothing to be smiley about.
It’s a default.
I want it to go away.
This person who smiles.

6:
I spent an hour of my lunch seated in the beige chair
Reading a book I’d read before,
Hunched over my small phone screen
While eating my lunch of dried apricots and peanuts.
But from that spot in the library,
No one can see me, I’m not watched.
So I can sit like a man.

7:
I warned her before I was going to do it.
Throw my phone across the room.
I had talked to my father.
It was one of the times he wasn’t listening, but hum-hawing along.

That same day, he drunkenly told me he loved me.
And I was upset that I wasn’t worth it sober.
I went into shut-down mode.
She asked what was wrong.
I smiled and made small-talk.
I think she finally realized just how much, exactly, I hide.

8:
So, part of growing up,
I’m told,
Is learning more about yourself, and growing habits.
I used to think I had no habits, I was the best in the world to live with.
But that’s not true anymore.
I’ve learned more about myself, and how I work.
So now, I take all that with me to each new person I share a sink next to.

9:
I’m mad at myself I couldn’t see it as a good thing that we both like to draw, and paint, and speak bad Spanish.
I didn’t see it as a bonding thing, but competition.
Because we’re similar, I had to be better.

10:
I held her baby.
I wanted a baby.
I didn’t understand this.
So I called my mom, hoping to have her tell me it was okay not to want kids, but crave something of my own.
Instead she told me all about how my stepbrother has decided everyone is dead to him, and how her conference went well.

Poems from My Day (6-7)

it’s not good right now.

1:
You will not do something nice for me and tell me how to feel about it.
That is emotionally manipulative.
I won’t stand for that.
My mother does that.
Am I clear?
You will not buy me something and tell me to be happy,
You can buy me something pretty and hope I’m happy, but you can’t expect me to be happy and grateful.
Do you know how gift giving works?
You do it expecting nothing in return, it is a gift.
My emotions are mine to feel, share and give away.
They aren’t yours to use and bask in.
If you give me flowers, I may be glad,
Or I may hate them, tell you so, and throw them in the trash.
You don’t get to say a goddamn thing about it.
Am I clear?
You don’t tell me how to feel in anyway shape or form.
Wow, you’re carrying a lot of baggage?
You’re goddamn on point now, bub.

2:
My mother always said that sometime I’d get hit, by like this thing, where I’d uncontrollably want babies, I’m sort of waiting for that, I guess.
But I’m so cold, I want someone to hold me.
Actually anyone who would just even smile at me would be fine.
What the hell is wrong with me.
I hate everyone.

3:
I remember the speech the salutatorian gave at my sister’s high school graduation 11 years ago.
That’s how good it was.
Being 2nd in the class wasn’t nothing. It’s a good school.
So many people went up to her afterwards to say what it meant to them.
My family still talks about it every time we go to a graduation.
Her speech.
She got up there, and said,
It wasn’t worth it.
She had worked and worked in high school.
And she was going to a state school, but her family could afford her free-ride tuition.
She turned down friends,
Events, family, to study.
It wasn’t worth it.
If she could go back, she would have partied.
She would have come out of high school with a friend.
It reminds me of the last interview Maurice Sendak gave to Terry Gross, and us,
He said, “live your life. Live your life. Live your life.”

4:
But god I shouldn’t have told him about Tim’s nephew.
I shouldn’t have told him.
Even though I didn’t really tell him,
I sort of skirted around the issue,
Tried to explain why I’m claustrophobic.
Told him why he couldn’t trap me, hold me, with both his arms.
I was hoping he was too drunk to remember.
But now he looks at me,
Or flits around with his hand,
I can’t say what you’ve been through,
Stuff like that.
I should have just kept quiet.

5:
I told her, I don’t have a plan, I might end up working with a wood carver, because I’m interested in that,
And I don’t really care.
She said can you deal with mom and dad having to tell people that,
And I said yes.
And she looked at me.
I don’t have a career path, and I don’t care.
I might care later, but I hope old me can respect younger me and the decisions I made at the time,
Because,
I’m okay with this.

6:
I remember my father talking to himself in this whiny howl-like voice,
He’d eek out my mother’s name as he went to sleep,
Or while he was distracted.
I remember thinking, “this is why I can never live alone.”
But I find myself almost chanting,
“I want to go home.”
Even though I have no home to go to anymore.
I think what I mean is,
“I want to feel safe.”
But I feel like I’m whining for a long-lost love, like my dad.

7:
I don’t know how to deal with these people being kind to me.
It keep freezing me up.
I cannot process it.
Rude? I can deal with.
Nice makes me feel undeserving.

8:
My mother used to say to herself,
“Tssssh”
And pretend she was spraying PAM,
While she drove us half asleep to our grandparent’s house three hours away.
“What’s that?” She would ask the car,
“I’m spraying Teflon on my self.
Ping, ding, fwing,
It all bounces right off.”
She would have to prepare herself for the fires of visiting my grandmother.
I found myself doing something similar on the plane ride over.
Except in my head was Mr. Rogers telling me I’m perfect as I am.

Poems from My Day (5-17)

these are decent

1:
Let me tell you about the scars I wish you had asked about
I listened as you told me all about yours.
The one from the bike crash where your atv fell into the creek, the one from you running into a pit full of sticks, the one you really should have gotten stitches for when you were little.
I didn’t get to talk about mine,
But I guess you can’t have it both ways,
You can’t hold back and then expect to be asked.
So I’ll keep my stories to myself, and pout,
No one wants to hear mine anyway.

2:
I had all these things built up to say to you in my mind,
I had all the ways I was going to act, all set up,
I knew how I was going to behave,
And say, and not say
I had my eye contact mapped out,
And I had topics planned.
And then you never came by.

3:
Let me tell you what happened. I’ll try to take my bias out.
As much as I can.
Somehow, she did it on purpose, or I let it happen on accident,
But she’s made me feel inferior,
Like I owe her something. i won’t stand for that.
She’s made me feel like I’m bad with people, bad at communicating,
Because we seem to misfire.
Like I’m not right enough, or good enough, somehow.
And then I went to the big city,
And I say city with quotes around it, remember I’m in Alaska,
And I got along so well with everyone, almost,
I remembered I’m pretty decent with people when I want to be
In the short term at least,
I’m kind of a failure long term,
But then again, I haven’t tried long term,
And as my mother would remind, you have that one chinese friend down where you went to college,
It was this great relief, to remember I can make friends, I can talk to people,
It’s not just me.

4:
The second I let myself be me, people look at me oddly,
And someone from my past shows up to laugh at me,
It’s awful.
I keep a tight leash.

5:
Me and alcohol have a weird thing going
I don’t crave it, but I don’t want to crave it, but I still want it,
But I’m proud of myself for not wanting it,
But I kind of want to drink it, but I won’t like it when I drink it,
Control.
I’ve seen too many people lose control.

6:
I’m about to spend two hundred dollars on produce that doesn’t go bad.
There. I did it. I clicked a few buttons online, and, groceries.
I’m trying to find foods I can take with me as lunch that won’t go bad without a refrigerator.
I need to go to the store for more bread, and vegetables, and meat, and eggs, and butter,
But my roommate hasn’t gone, and I don’t want to ask.
What am I going to do this summer, when she’s not here, and I have no car?
Hmm?
Die. I’m going to die.
Or just bike ride everywhere. Yeah. Right.
I need a car.
I can’t afford a car.

7:
I told Beth a little about my roommate’s romantic life,
I regret that.
I try to keep people’s people to myself.
But she asked,
And I think I wanted to share, cut her down a little, which I now feel guilty about.
I hope it doesn’t go anywhere.
This boy? She asked, don’t you mean this boy? No, that one. She’s dating that one.
I bet they’re related and I just insulted someone.
Shit.

8:
What an odd thing to say, “where is my dog?”
It shows such propriety.
She didn’t use her name, or say,
“Where’s the dog.”
My dog.
Like somehow, in the last two hours, I’d taken her away.

9:
I love how dogs hold a bone like they’re scared it’s going to run away.
I wish I held on to life that way.

10:
I want lightning. I want my anger to show up in the clouds.
But it rains, then sometimes, rains louder.
And there are 10 days when it’s clear and beautiful,
The only days you can convince people to live here.
That’s what they tell me,
When I’m visiting the city.

11:
I’m trying to write, I’m trying to explain what it was, how it felt,
Let me start over.
I chaperoned a high-school lock-in 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.
At 3:30 the leader lady (my roommate) split them up,
They didn’t have to be asleep, just in one of two rooms.
She asked me if I was going to sleep,
I told her I wasn’t sure.
I shut my eyes for maybe twenty minutes. My feet fell asleep.
I tried sleeping on the ground, it was too cold.
I tried sleeping in a ball, I am too fat.
I got up and read on my tiny iphone 4 in the hallway.
My roommate asked me, did you sleep?
A little, I said.
Lying.
Wow, she said. That’s amazing. She said.
You can do that. Control it like that.
What did you do in college I wanted to ask.
But, what I couldn’t tell her,
And what I guess, she’s never been exposed to,
Is
There are reasons people can’t sleep in groups they don’t trust.
I haven’t been able to fall asleep with another person in,
God what year is it?
8 years.
And she shamed me for it.

Poems from My Day (5-10)

i had a day i thought would turn out better.

1:
I bought a bike.
I purchased it in pieces.
I assembled as much as I could.
Perhaps I was overwhelmed.
It’s been sitting half done in the spare room.
That room smells like rubber now.
Hang on a second, I have to let the dog in.
Two people offered to help.
I can’t take them up on it.
I don’t know why.
I should be biking,
I’ll have to this summer,
Carless. When my ride goes back down to Montana.
I can’t seem to, get it done.
I stare at it.
I think, give me a little more time.
I think that about a lot of things,
Just give me a minute.
One more second.
A moment to figure it out.
I am the mud of spinning wheels.
I am death.
I don’t know what that means.
I should go to sleep.

2:
I’m sad my clothes smell like the wet mold you get from not drying properly.
I don’t know how to fix this.
The dog, not my dog, the dog bangs at the door to come in.
She scratches.
Her owner taught her to breathe at the door.
Exhale, exhale, exhale.
She wants to come in.
I can’t hold out as long as my roommate.
The whining gets to me.
If I ever have a baby,
The same thing will probably happen.
I’ll be the weak one who’ll give into the cries.

3:
The woman who works next to me read me part of a book today,
A children’s book about how to play nicely with others,
Something something brown colored pencil,
No one wanted to be around the thing because it was always negative.
Is that me?
I am a brown colored pencil that’s always angry and sad.
What does it mean about my adulthood that I take lessons from children’s picture books?
I self-censor when I keep my mouth shut.
Adult conversation isn’t all that advanced from when we were seven, I suppose.

4:
A little kindergardener mimicked me in a mocking way today.
That hadn’t happened to me in years,
I wanted to call her a little shit,
But she’s a kindergardener.
I didn’t know what to do.
I was upset I was offended.
I have no coping mechanism for this.
It reminded me of the time I met a new girl in choir,
And the first thing she said to me was did I know my two front teeth were longer than all the others?
Yes.
I’m aware.
That’s all I can ever say to bullies young and small.
Yes.
I’m aware.

5:
They look at me like they’re waiting for me to say something else.
I don’t know what.
That’s it.
I can come up with more to say.
If I were on a college campus it would be a day where everyone would look at me weird.
And the servers at the dining hall would cock their heads to the side.

6:
I want to go home.
I use that phrase as a litmus test of how bad a day is going.
Oh man, I only thought that three times before lunch.
I have no home to go to.
It would be worse back there.
I tell myself.
You’d be within driving distance of your mother.
But it’s become a Monk’s chant.
I shower. I want to go home, I want to go home.
I cook. I want to go home, I want to go home.
I fall asleep, alone, after no one invited me out.
I pet the dog who can’t quite get her blind eyes to focus on my face.
I check my cell phone for messages.
I stretch familiar yoga poses in the dark.
I sing Prince songs I’ve heard a thousand times before.
I pretend to like the beer they’re drinking.

7:
She was on the second floor of this office building off a boulevard right off the exit of the highway.
The building next door stood empty.
She is black,
I didn’t want that to be a thing,
But I think worrying about it was wrong,
I tried to be normal,
So I guess, that makes it just like all my other interactions with people,
Trying to pass as normal.
Not wanting anyone to hate me, so they won’t tell everyone else they hate me.

Poems from My Week (3/31)

i’ve been having trouble getting my thoughts together in one piece this week. so this week’s poems are structured a little differently to accommodate

1:
I’ve learned that you need to be straightforward and honest.
Say what really happened, because otherwise you’ll forget what you were lying about, and it’ll slip out.
It’s less work for you in the long run, if you think of it that way.
Which is how I think of most things.
Like why I still go to church, and won’t tell my parents I don’t really believe.
It’s less work for me in the long run. Less to deal with.
My mom can make her own assumptions, but this way it doesn’t come between us. And it isn’t a thing.

2:
I felt like I was a guinea pig, being used to see how a process would work, it’s not a good feeling, being a product. It’s really not.
It might make more money. But it makes me sad.
Because I don’t feel like me, I feel like I’ve reacted a certain way based on the circumstances you’ve place around me.
Unnatural. Forced.
There’s nothing I hate more than being told to feel something.

3:
I understand now.
Why people bring little bits of things along with them.
It’s so something looks familiar.
It’s so unsettling. To have nothing you’re sure of. Nothing you already know.
When you know how it breaks, cracks, falls
It’s less to think about. You know how the bugs move.

4:
I went to a funeral today, for a women whose kids were taken away.
She drank herself to death.
4th this year. In a town this size.
This place has a nice tradition. They wear the dead person’s favorite team’s jerseys to the funeral. I like that. I think if I died a few people would show up and wear some Colts stuff. It would mean a little bit of something to me. That’s some sense of community then.
Everyday I feel like a belong a little more, when I meet someone and think they would come to my funeral.
It’s like high school all over again.

5:
I have so much trouble going to places where I’m supposed to feel a certain way.
I want to sit in the back and crack jokes, and be inappropriate.
I can do it at home, no consequences. I’m an asshole.
But here, everything is noticed, and it doesn’t work nearly as well.
And I haven’t found anyone to let my guard down against.
I have little hope I’ll find someone, who’ll let me be.

6:
I’m so upset right now.
Why am I upset, the counselor in my head asks?
I’m upset because it is the final day on my contract,
And I had a final call with my supervisor.
This is the job I quit when I moved up here.
And she was rude.
She blamed me for not doing something I did.
I’m so angry.
Well, here’s what happened.
We scheduled a call for 9:30 a.m. EST
That means, 5:30 a.m. my time. I woke up early specially.
The guy who was supposed to be on the call never showed.
So instead we went over things that might need to happen.
There are two things to be sent for review.
During the one time I got to talk last call, she must have zoned out.
I am unlistened to. That’s frustrating.
Because I said what she’s getting mad about me over the phone.
I said out loud what was going on with the blogs.
Not only that, I added it to a physical document, then shared the document with her in two different ways.
You have no right to be mad at me.
I’m mad that she’s mad at me.
God, I’m so glad I left.
So, so, so, glad.
Literally you can complain about me all you want to your little friend, bad-mouth up to high-heaven, I did what I was supposed to do. When I couldn’t, I got out. What more do you want from me?
Uh-oh. I’m asking the question only jerks ask.

I feel like I’m waiting for a clock to run out of time, or finish that no one else can hear. My countdown isn’t on your timer.

I think, maybe, once I’m done with this year, I’ll stay rural. Maybe not Alaska rural. But rural. I like being this far away from my family. I like it.

7:
Anyway, I’m trying to express what’s really there, and it’s not working.
I’m trying to open up.
But, there’s something blocking, something I can’t tell you or anyone else about, and that’s hard. I think it’s stopping me. I think I’m starting to sound like a lifetime commercial.

Screw it. I’ll tell you about it.
But it’s one of those, that I really hope gets buried in this pile of regular rubbish.
I’m trying to be open and honest here, because I am no where else.
A guy my roommate, new person, only person I know, introduced me to,
Helped me look for her dog,
Went out fishing with,
Invited himself over to hang out while she wasn’t here.
Fine.
Everybody drinks here. They won’t eat processed foods, but they’ll drink rubbing alcohol.
He brought a backpack full of PBR.
Fine.
We dyed easter eggs.
He touched my knee.
And I said I had to ask my friend before we went farther.
That didn’t work. But it didn’t go too far.
I feel so guilty.
It took me two days to tell her he was over here.
Then she asked little questions,
And I did what I do best,
I sound like an idiot and distract.
But, oh man. He was so warm. And there seems to always be a chill here.
The man in the iron mask was playing. And we watched chuck Norris.
And I’m a terrible person. I’m so alone.

I try so hard to be cool, calm, collected.
I just mess it up every single day.
I think, oh man, this time I won’t say anything.
And then I do.
Why do I say anything.

8:
My dad said something a little racist on the phone, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

My new roommate said something interesting, she said, I wish there was a guide, one, two, three, four steps you could take to make it better. But there’s not. Not for when your parents drink themselves to death while you’re still young, still in high school. You didn’t live with her anymore. But still.

I did something wrong again. And I don’t know what. I keep messing up.
Can I have one day I do right?
It’ll be the day I sleep for 24 hours.