MONDAY
On Monday, the news anchor will mock me,
call me ugly and talentless.
She’ll laugh
her cruel laugh,
and provide unassailable proof:
You have lost loved ones,
which can only mean
that you
and your love
are disposable.
And I will swallow the words,
late for work.
The headlines will all agree,
blaring through loudspeakers
and neon bullets.
Fellow passengers
lock eye contact,
conceding to me and themselves
as our train squeals and burrows
through cement,
plaster and bedrock.
Tongues locked,
throats clamped,
language scrambled into static
feedback loops,
filling without nourishing,
propelling us forward.
A code without a codex,
somehow intelligible
seared on our backs:
We have lost loved ones,
which can only mean
that we
and our loves
are disposable.
Ugly.
Talentless.
TUESDAY
On Tuesday, my boss will admonish me,
rasping on my neck:
You are always late.
Even when you are early
you are late.
Your time will always be mine,
and I will never not chain you with it.
The call from the debt collector
will explode in my hand,
teaching me
to beat my heart at an irregular rhythm
and to numb parts of my skin.
Deserts will grow in my chest,
blisters rub raw,
clock-hands dig under my fingernails.
I’ll fall asleep at my desk
and dream only
of the hole in my brain
and the dancing seizures
vibrating like beetles in a garden bag.
And when my productivity
is about to dip
to unacceptable levels,
when it is time I bought myself
that pacemaker
I’ve had my eye on
all year,
when I finally work up the nerve,
I will go to my boss,
and let my brittle bones
do the talking for me:
Even when I am early
I am late.
My time will always be yours,
and you will never not chain me with it.
He’ll smile.
His breath will stink of arsenic.
WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday, the police officer
will drown me in tar,
sealing me inside my apartment,
gluing my eyelids
to the text of the ticket:
You are charged
with vagrancy
inside your own home.
Your penalty is boredom.
My bed
turns to a concrete slab,
books to blood clots,
my clothes to brown paper bags.
The windows will be walled up,
gas vapor replaces sunlight.
Cracks in the walls
whisper,
tell me about
the other prisoners next door.
Tedious gossip,
bullshit.
And I’ll scratch
and scratch
and scratch,
looking for patterns
in the delousing powder
stuck to my face.
At long last, I confess:
I am charged
with vagrancy
inside my own home.
My penalty is boredom.
The police officer will act
like they didn’t hear me.
THURSDAY
On Thursday, I will be threatened
by a map of the world:
The only good nation
is an empty nation.
You must do your part
to keep our borders safe.
Make yourself vanish.
Demolish your history.
Chased across
longitude and latitude,
paper cuts and ink stains
form bruises and contusions.
Sons and daughters
drowned in the printed oceans,
caravans of napalm,
and promises of cages
whose bars slither
through a body’s sinews.
A friendless existence,
no solace, no allies,
helpless in the cruelty
of imperial karma.
Trapped between
burning grain silos,
mountains of ash,
and walls of dead thorn
a mile high,
I’ll join the choir.
Our mouths lose control,
spitting up,
against their will,
a pledge they –
and I –
did not write:
The only good nation
is an empty nation.
I must do my part
to keep our borders safe.
Make myself vanish.
Demolish my history.
The map will quiver with delight,
before scattering on the acrid breeze.
FRIDAY
On Friday, congress will declare:
Weekends are decadent.
We can no longer afford your respite.
Saturday and Sunday
are forever canceled.
I’ll sleep through my alarm,
pulling the iron blanket
up to my chin,
my nostrils and stomach
predicting nausea,
soft secrets of manacles
in my ears,
eyes far from the panic
of thick, suffocating air.
Waking night-terror
in broad daylight.
And the news anchor –
the one with cruel laughs
and perfect proof –
will shake me awake.
Forgetting the feeling
of deep sleeps and tender touches,
I will be slapped with revelation:
Weekends are decadent.
We can no longer afford my respite.
Saturday and Sunday
are forever canceled.
Forgive me, Monday.
Forgive me.
Image by Collective 17.
