how you know your soul is in trouble:

1. you look forward to going to the bathroom to be alone, take off your mask & cry quietly

2. being in the 21st grade and knowing absolutely nothing about happiness

3. being so immersed in your prision you stop noticing what makes your heart sing, or, if you do notice the pang of longing you quickly recruit intellect to crush the rebellion

4. wanting patients to not show up. not have so many problems. finish your bare-bone note & get the hell out.

5. ...having so many first world problems to complain about...

It's a viceral pain

It's a visceral pain this one
My gut screaming out at
inopportune moments,
The energy-sucking fat female and forty
who got her gallbladder done away
with just this past Tuesday stares at me,
I've forgotten what my next question is...

19+

My cat, you know, the one who always bites my toes,

Is going to live forever.

She is indifferent to her age, the way I figure, she is 19+

She is as she was and will always be.

Hiding from everyone but me, craving attention

But unable to receive it -

‘Come on, come on, please pet me,

I want to bite you’ – which always startles me and

I shout No! but she’s 19 and still does it.

She’s 19 and for 19 years has puked half of her dinner

On the rug of whatever room she happens to be in at the time.

She sits, four feet away from wherever I am, her back to me,

Waiting for whatever move I dare to make and then she’s

Under my feet and I cannot walk reasonably without

Stumbling over her.

She is a beautiful calico (my son says they are always a little crazy)

So beautiful.  She watches me carefully.

Her name is Sophie and she is 19+ years old.