Staring at the TV, your eyes
record and replay. Choose the door

on the left, you whisper, clutching
the remote like it could change

the channel, legs entwined in that old
ratty blanket of inevitability. Think on it. Lie

back, read the shadows on the ceiling,
stones and cockles and that mess 

in the bottom of your cup. It’s absurd
but there you have it. Outside it could be

raining, or snowing, or nuclear
goddamned winter and you’d never know

it, never feel it aching in your bones.
In the misery of a fallen bird’s nest

you take away the worst possible
news. Use it to mar the surface

of things, to pound at the door, to long
for your imagined past and the place

you miss the most. If what I say can be
interpreted two ways, then choose

the least objectionable. Bring along the dead
babies, the ones you never rocked, the absent

fathers, your own broken heart held
tightly in your fist, its magic all

used up. Everything but the kitchen sink. Imagine
your life without me, without the idea

of me. The temptation to walk
upright. The tendency toward

equilibrium or entropy, it makes no difference
to the dead but it keeps you going so there’s that.

We all need to lay our burdens down some
time. Just not today. Just not tomorrow.