So certain days, you don't get up early
and leave
the apartment building,
exit to the street, glutted
with frozen-over slush,
and breathe
the exhaust of the blue garbage trucks
as you walk past the windows
of the buttoned-up
businesses on the block, hardly believing
the truth of expression
in that stretched-out and stained
reflection brooding back.
Some days, you stay in
instead. You make coffee
and sit by the living
room window, trying to contemplate
the steam,
like a dissipating dream, repeating
little snippets of last
night's conversation, make-believing
you're smoking like the old days.
You swear—the harder you try
to keep sill, remain calm, take care
of your heart, and all that—
the more anxious and steadily self-
obsessed you get.
You try to insist, you don't see
any damn poetry out there
anyway; at the moment,
just a silhouette
of a mysterious guy
in profile, driving briskly by,
and vaping
like mad in a shiny, black Audi.
