Nothing is sophisticated about these headaches,
I get in the middle of what is supposed to be
the kind of afternoon that was made for a ceasefire.

But this has been a long season of waiting
for you to show up,
of marching through the festivities,
that has turned the infinite into a pissant city of two billion.

Months of coffee and anxiety attacks,
and anxiety attacks and coffee,
and coffee and anxiety attacks,
and anxiety attacks and anxiety attacks,
and coffee and fluorescents boiling my perception
of how I feel in my own skin.

It builds. It repeats.
Obnoxious crying fits are an obligation
I’m never prepared to accept.
Reverberation of routine hangs tight with humidity.

Or it’s snowing,
the gas station has been closed for days,
and no one in that smallest of the small towns,
huddled together in the hands of my memories
is going to ask me why I’m on my own again.

The headaches come and go.
The season is neurotic, wants to learn knife-throwing
from a Martin Scorsese picture.
The girls usually leave before I do,
because all that silence after all that laughter
is just fucking eerie.

I make a deal with you,
but I don’t let you in on it,
and I don’t let that stop me
from being amazed that you can go on
with your day.

If this is actually a coma,
and I’m just the latest huckster miracle
waiting with big eyes for a bus full of accolades,
and a driver with teenage trauma stories,
disorders and adult acne,
post-stressed out, three fingers between both hands,
it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

Comatose,
but accountable for whoever doesn’t love me back,
and for however long I’m going to be here,
and for remembering things exactly as they happened.

And for things that quiet down,
and pick up right after I leave to cure what ails me.

07/30/2013

Posted on 07/31/2013
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