I.

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!
—Emily Dickinson

Glued glued eyeballs
content hell.
Let’s take a picture!
Wait, no I look bad.
Delete it.
DELETE IT!
Scared to look at the drunk selfies
I posted on my story last night
and it’s like um, PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Drunk Ass Selfies).
OK. Let’s get on with it.
The Super Blue Moon
is tonight, but actually
it’ll be full at noon,
which hardly seems fair.
I write it down in my planner:
12 pm: go outside and look at the super fucking blue ass moon.
But I forget. What a tragedy!
Yeah, so apparently
the moon is only full
for a quick kiss hello
then it turns away
from us, or starts dimming, or whatever
it does in its little “phases.”
Why is everything like that :(
You can have a perfect moment—
but that’s it.
Then you drop your phone in the toilet
and your tire light comes on
and you think you smell gas in your apartment
and your favorite coworker puts in her notice
and you bite your lip
and forget your lunch
and he never texts you back
and you realize your mom left you on read too.
What if the moon doesn’t
turn towards us again, doesn’t grow brighter,
brighter brighten into its perfect circle moon-face
& it’s dark
in perpetuity?
Already, we are pitiful:
pawing at breasts,
clawing for seeds and meat and look at me’s!
Moony-eyed beasts
forever seeking pleasure.
Oh please, oh please! Touch me!
It’s kind of weird. EW.
Nobody look at me.
Wait, just kidding! Look how cute my outfit is!
The stars are too far away
and only gestures of what they used to be anyway,
so the night sky can’t moonless.
We can’t take the darkness,
or each other.
Not without the moon.
Please, come back.
You’re all we have
in common.

II.

I may want to die, but at least I’m still alive.
—James Schuyler

The book I wanted
came in the mail today
and I saw a swan eat a fish,
its white neck ringed
with pond scummy green
gulping it down,
then it looked at me with
such horrible majesty,
I almost
wanted to cry.
I probably won’t even read that book—
I’ll probably pace around my apartment picking
things up and putting them down
opening drawers and folding clothes
and changing my clothes putting
on a t-shirt but getting cold so I put
on a sweater but then I get sweaty
and cold at the same time so I change again
into shorts and a sweatshirt and that seems okay so I sit
on the couch and try to find a song to listen to but nothing
satisfies me because I wanna find new music
but I don’t wanna to give anything a try
so I pop back up and start to make tea
then see the cute stickers I got in LA on the counter
and try to find a place to put them I won’t regret forever and of course I can’t
so I sit down on my rug and flip through Rilke poems
forget I boiled water but remember I need to water my plants
I pick up the book and carry it to the couch
but then I think of a line for a poem
so I go back into the kitchen and sit at the counter and write it down in my notebook,
and it’s stupid on the page,
not clever like it seemed
in my head, but I try to keep writing anyway,
except pink is the only word I can think of
and now I hate it so much.
Fuck pink.

I am squirrely and squiggled,
it’s true—jumpy and jolty and jilted.
And you fear me.You should:
Chaos never dies.
I don’t know what I’m going to do next.
I could run away, down to the water,
or stand up and give a speech to my Sociology 101 class,
or take a bus to Washington DC
in the middle of the night with a stranger.
Cold snap your fingers the seasons go—
just like you and me and our brains and our bodies.
Never the same sky again.
Everyone is sniffling
but claiming not to be sick.
Someone yell-sneezes and I jump to my feet. Jesus!
The door slams and the toilet flushes too loud
and it feels like I’m being hunted.
Perma-guilty for things I’ve never done
or something I said so long ago it doesn't matter:
I was eight years old, let it go!
Shaky hand spills coffee and water and wine
and salsa and nail polish and I can’t take it—
Always a little bit of a mess.
Always have a weird minor injury:
papercut, burned tongue, skinned knee,
blister on my heel, sliver under my fingernail, mysterious bruise on my bicep.
Like I have to always be just a little bit hurt.
Paint my windows black.
Creep into a silly sadness:
self-imposed and carefully curated:
like resting in the crook of a familiar elbow:
not comfortable but not not comfortable.
Play that Calvin Harris song I never liked anyway
from that summer
just to hurt myself;
just to bring it all back:
the back of the ambulance,
the last words he said,
that last look in his eyes—
like I was worse than dead.
November cuts my lip.
I see through me. You must too.
I can’t let anyone know what I’m really like.
Wrote that in my Notes app on the drive to college when I was 18.
Like a ghost like a whisper like cigarette breath freezing to cosmic dust in the lung
of an ancient bumblebee preserved for centuries
I am forgotten, but then remembered
because wait, that was pretty fucking weird actually, what I did that day.
Like how could anyone forget?
As if I’m so important.
Big bombastic catalyst
or little church mouse quiet kid.
I don’t know. I’m annoying.
I like being annoying.
It’s strange. Isn’t it? Supreme and in my prime,
Forget to [won’t] follow a lead that isn’t mine.
Fought so hard to be this self—
this man in front of you.
I’m free to wear pink
and piss in the urinal.
I don’t care what you think.
But I am getting tired,
of being so ethereal, like, what a bore!
I’m such a glamour ghost
gliding over these waxy floors,
blessing everyone with my presence, bitchy little jokes.
When will my transcendence begin to take shape?
This fleshy realm is turgid and bloated and grimy and dull;
sort of hot and stuffy like my great-aunt’s living room, it had these
white couches with horrible, ugly flowers and the grandfather clock
menacing me, moving time so slow.
Except, it only seemed slow: it’s been 20 years and that house
is still there.
But it’s gone.

Actually, I think all I needed
was to go outside and run around just to run around—
I want something but I can’t figure out what.
I want to be somewhere, but I don’t know where
or how I would get there.
Somewhere that’s, I don’t know—less material.
Jolt and jump and flinch and duck
and run and run and run.
The guillotine. A pink chair.
The perfect rug.
White teeth and soft hands.
I am a hungry ghost,
rejecting sleep, watching things.
Doomy shadows jumpy on the wall, music faint
across the hall.
This everyday life.
What do swans eat?
Moonlight, maybe.