It is right there, outside the window, A slight breeze ruffles its yellow leaves; I should water it; I should pull up the weeds growing in clumps around it; I should care. I watered it for two years, Sleepless nights, hours of tears, It lived; It did not thrive, But not for lack of care. Some days I walk to the front window, I pull down the blinds and look at it. Some days I feel a stirring of concern; Some days I think about watering it; Some days I do. Today, like most days I only think of concern. I do not feel. I do not put on my shoes. I do not open the door. I do not even look out the window. That life I was building, That career, That body of work, That reason for being, Is not forgotten, It is withered. I have tried to define it. Malaise. Lethargy. Apathy. Depression. Laziness. Boredom. I have tried to give reasons. The wrong choice. Too hard. Too much criticism. Bad luck. I just wasn't good enough. It wasn't the right fit. I'm just in a bad spot. I'm just depressed. I just need to start moving. I just need to do SOMETHING. I worry that I cannot worry, that the tasks and stress I carried for so long now are absent. That drive and work ethic that found me waking at 4:30AM is long gone. I wake late and lay in bed with plans that fall short and plans that overwhelm. I try to care. I try to feel. I try to try. It feels like too much; I feel too little. Can one commit suicide through inaction? Can you just stop making choices? Can you just stop deciding? Can you just wither away like a plant unwatered? Can time speed on and wander away while I remain a part of the past?

And sometimes I write bad free verse.

“I hate you” a love poem

I hate when you don’t say “hello.”
I hate when you turn from me to talk to someone else.
I hate your sideways one-armed hug.
I hate seeing your picture at parties I did not attend.
I hate seeing you leave without a goodbye.
I hate the inside jokes you have with other people.
I hate that we’re only friends when we’re in the same place.
I hate that you bring out a jealous side of me I didn’t know I had.
I hate that I care.
I really care.


“What do you want?”

You ask me if I’m all right and I say I’m fine.
You look at me and say you don’t believe me.
What do you want?
Do you want me to pour out my fears, my anxieties, my neuroses and shortcomings in the middle of this crowded room?
Do you want me to cry and let loose the flow of insecurities that I’ve just barely contained with these bits of mental string and tape?
Do you want me to tell you all the things that you can’t possibly fix so that you can look at me with those friendly eyes and say you’re sorry?
Please don’t tug at these strings, don’t pick at my tape, they’re the only things allowing me to remain in this form, keeping me from falling apart into something you could only pity.

“How would it happen?”

I’d like to think I would be like those old barns you see along the interstate…Their grand forms sloping and capped by a caved in roof but the weathered form still clinging together through habit and sound framing.
I’d like to think I would be like an old tree, the form—though eerie and solemn—erect and still: the massive, silent icon of its living self. No joyful springtime greens, no golden falls, but the carapace remaining a ghost of oak or birch or walnut glory.
I’d like to remain, like an ancient sculpture perhaps, lacking in parts, an armless, faceless model, yet still beautiful in perfect proportions, in the curve of my hip or the truthfully rendered arch of my back and slope of my shoulders—forever portraying a glimpse of the refined grace that once was.
Yet I think sometimes I will topple like a shack of woven twigs—a knotted pile, form no longer discernible. No boundaries or structure, only the heap-like mound of an unused and overturned bird’s nest.
Or, like a sculpture of water and dirt contained in a thin casing, I will, without warning, burst and splash onto the floor, my parts seeping through floorboards and running down crevices, with no possibility to be saved or re-assembled. People will stare in momentary horror as my parts vanish into corners and drip down stairways, a flashed thought of salvation dismissed as impossible immediately. A murky puddle to be cleaned the only legacy of my presence.