Hysteria!

Because if I don't joke about it, I’ll 

have to weep about it and spoon-feed

myself fake reasons to spend my last 

five cents on cigarettes and a dick to

 

make up for the difference in dollars 

and years between me and menthols.

I’ll have to swallow my gum and float

under back roads to the nearest thrift 

 

for pants that don’t fall to my knees as 

easily as I do and sift through someone’s

mother’s stained pajamas to bring home 

to my bank of sedatives and 

barren cupboard, 

 

mocking my trip to a cure–

if I rest for too long while it thunders in the 

kitchen, I’ll open cracked eyes to a violent father 

and close them 

 

to the morning ritual 

at a table full of 

fetching strangers in a spineless Maryland’s 

ruined March air, 

wondering why the February wrath was so much worse 

than the January shock and 

 

all I really remember 

is whining and swearing and wailing and 

pleading into that dead fucking landline when

a machine picked up–

 

because

they’ve finally stopped waiting.