One Consecutive Day

There’s something about a poem

in particular

that wants to slide out perfectly

smooth and long and slick

like a shit you didn’t know you needed to take

Sometimes I don’t want to feed myself

Unless I can plate up the plutonic ideal

So I starve myself a little

as a treat

An app tells me

That I’ve been feeding myself for one consecutive day

And you’ve gotta take pride in the smallest of milestones

if you want to save a life

Even after a slew of work related deaths

That 1 day without accidents has got to count for something

When I open my mac

And ride the escalator to the iCloud

I find myself in a graveyard of the semester I planned

I pass the corpses briskly, uncomfortably

Until I reach the proper grave

I pull a spade out of my back pocket,

adjust my lonely little bowtie,

and start digging

for that one article that was going to

springboard me to intellectual nirvana

A sliver of sweetness on the top of my tongue

as I remember the first steps of our dance

before I shoved you off a cliff

and hid in my sheets for 4 months

I don’t want to look at you,

so I feel around for you like a father

who can’t bring himself to see the dumpster

he’s harvesting from to feed his children

But when I touch that listless hand,

it grasps mine through the loose layer of soil

A baby corpse’s grasp

My left eye jiggles like it’s been doing

And my jaw drops, tumbling down each step of the escalator

You smile

I sheepishly reel my jaw back up

“You been practicing?”

“For one consecutive day.”

“That’s a start.”

You hold my hand the whole way down the escalator

And maybe I’ll trust myself enough to

ask you for another dance.

Annalise Cain