Scraps of paper languish

in a musty box in the basement, postcards,

pictures drawn

for someone

you used to be.

 

They shuffle

from class to class, vacuous,

heads down, no idea

where they’re going, concentrating

on nothing, flashes of color

on their screens, a blip

and gone.

 

 

The lonely cubicle
in the back of the church
beckons, the screened window
separating the priest who sits
on a small chair far
away, waiting for someone
to absolve
this and other things.

old hurts
like wounds
you slowly
pick at, your knee
turning bright red,
the scab a brown recluse
that won’t go away.

falls apart
around me, my clothes
in separate piles on the floor
waiting to be tossed
down the stairs,
landing in a heap
on the cold concrete.

 

I am always
running late, on my way
to somewhere else
someplace better
than where I am.
I arrive looking
perfect, impossibly
chic, sipping a latte or maybe
sparkling wine, the bubbles
rising up
to tickle my tongue.

arrives,
stopping by
to do odd jobs, things I can’t do
or are too lazy to try to figure out,
my fingers like fat bloated sausages,
fumbling with the drill that ends up
back in the box on the closet floor.
my walls with tiny holes in them
or big chunks of plaster missing,
dust accumulating on the floor, a reminder
of all I cannot do.

You are always harder on yourself,

my therapist says to me

as we sip our coffee,

eat our muffins.  Our relationship

is unconventional.  We meet every

few months or 6 months or maybe

years.  I talk about my job or parenting

or men or lack

of men, looking back

on deep regrets, things I can’t

control but can’t stop

thinking about, the choices I have made,

going through life

blind.

The old woman, bent and impossibly thin, skin

like parchment, exits the doctor’s

office, alone and muttering:  That was a horrifying experience.

She is bent over, white hair, gossamer

lace.  In spite of it, I almost laugh out loud, life

a cruel joke, imagining

the children in the waiting room, shivering

with the fear of it all.