A Ponderance of Real Life

This kind of exhaustion didn't come when I was young
I stayed up with mugs filled with black coffee or cheap Sheetz cappuccino writing -
Endless pillars of words stacking one on another:
Coliseums built with my night times.

Today I cannot bring myself to walk back out to the car to pick up my prescription at the local CVS on Merrimon: a five minute drive.

Today the dark circles aren't hidden by the wire rims of my glasses.

Today I want to make a lasagna and yet...

And yet.

The house stands firm and occupied but not clean. Not ready for visitors, even though I'm lonely.

I remember living alone in a dorm room with floating candles I lit for poetry parties with my literary friends and I felt so special and empowered and now I long for the fantasy of what "grown-up" would mean:

space of my own:

freedom to grow -

Because just now I feel confined in my inability to find alone-ness without loneliness
Confined by my need to ferry children to their places
Confined by the necessity of nurturing everyone around me
Who will nurture me?

It builds up behind my forehead like stopped up sinks with gallons of water

I want the bursting but the bursting is destructive and I...

I am not destructive.

I am tired.

And I am kind.

And I am too quiet.

And I am screaming/silent.

After Hours

She walked outside at night in November
Wind nibbling all the exposed parts and forgetting about the word 'mercy'
She wrapped her sweater tighter and pushed onward through the snow, just a few inches
In the sidewalk on the way to the coffee shop.

There was work to be done and she could see the amber fill of the light on the cement outside, pouring from the window and bathing the whole street in the glow.

She longed for warmth
Control,
Safety.

She longed for steam in her nostrils and heat in the palms of her hands that would radiate straight to her heart.

"I'm sorry, ma'am.  We're closed."

The bells tinkled as the door shut.
And, once again, she was left empty.