just write it out.

[wodizzle]

the universe cannot send me anything I can't handle.//

i sometimes hope that this is going to be
one of those night where i get 12 hours of sleep
instead of the usual 7. this is one less hour than
is recommended but that's not what bothers me
it is
that i can't
ever quite
make it to 8.//

it is hot in this house.
while the others play cards
i eat my dinner of soup and sandwich
in silence and
retreat to my room on the
first floor, where i am alone
with music,
without any breeze:

it is refreshing
familiar
miserable on some accounts
beautiful on all others.

i do not ask for bedtime stories.
i wait impatiently in my own
sweat, in my own sheets,
to hear the long footsteps
up and down the staircase.
everyone is moving, laughing,
except for me.
i am writing this poem.

it is not you that i regret.
as usual what i regret is the waste,
the hours and minutes misspent,
in favor of solitude.
my private depression,
slaying the nightly demons
in the closet and under my eyelids,
too.
it is them that i regret,
them that i hate.

i did not ask for summer
and i did not ask for you.
these things just come;
they emerge in my darkest hour
and i sink them with sounds
of the things i love. i think of
my secret sweetheart
or the way i feel when i am on
an airplane home.

and then i can relax
and let the blood flow again. //

and of course,
the dali lhama is my favorite drug.//

here's lookin' at you, ben.