Cookie

So much to say

But my words scatter

Like I dropped the cereal box

All over the kitchen

They elude the swatter

Like crafty flies

Racing away like rainless clouds

Mocking the still-parched wheat field of my brain

And wafting about,

They float down into parking lots

Or onto tar and gravel roofs of big box stores

Like disappointed dandelion seeds

I nod and I’m dreaming

And I’m suddenly running

Trying to get to that important place

For some reason that makes no sense

Someone's in front of me

I can’t speak and they don’t recognize me

And my mouth gapes uselessly

Now I’m in high school

My essay’s not done and I hate it there

And then I’m back

A still empty page

And heavy, obstinate words

They’re obese

Lolling in front of the TV

Unemployed; zero motivation,

Thoughts, like boots sucked down into swamp mud.

The coffee shop is clanking and chattering,

Outside is cars and chaos

And I sip my black Columbian

While lying in a hospital bed

With eyes closed

There’s medical machines beeping

A deep gravity in the doctor’s voice

Nurses laugh and banter

As they come and indifferently go

But I am comatose

My body won’t respond

I look down on it like a house I no longer live in

After the divorce

I twitch and my sluggish eyes open

And there's that empty page

And I’m looking at that cookie on the counter

Five hundred calories that I don’t need

And its seven dollars, and I’m angry

Cause we both know that’s ridiculous

It’s a cookie, for fuck’s sake, not a steak

That I don’t even want

But there it is.

And I can't stop looking.