I got stuck coming out, which is why I’m now here
in tears only twenty years later, with neighbors banging
walls and telling me to shut up; “some people work” after all.
Manic depression is like the rat that ran across the room
pulling a trigger and launching its claim to what’s left of
good judgment. So I’ll remain awake and take what’s left
of the night and put it to good use, (I dare say, staring at corners)
waiting for mice. Friends are busy sorting their squalor
and don’t want to hear about vermin. “They will just eat the flies
anyway” they say, though humor is stiff when you’re awake in bed
flinching at each sway of the blinds and the hardened sap. I sometimes
prefer dramatic wars over still evenings like this, listening to car
crashes on the 55 and plotting with peanut butter and traps.
