Calm Down, It’s Only Monday

I’ve been writing a lot of poems lately, which is never a sign of chill mental health.

It’s like telling a friend, “I’m going to drive to the ocean and think.”

Anytime you’re driving alone to the ocean to decide something, it’s already too late. The thing’s been decided.

I can’t wait for LA summer to be over. The heat’s making me feel cooped up and crazy.

Something died in the succulents in front of my apartment building and the air is thick with death. I can’t open my windows otherwise the stink comes in.

A lot of death in the air right now. People, animals, ideologies, dreams. And impending deaths. I got a call today about a loved one’s declining health. If we’re all mortal, why is death so hard to accept?

This morning when I went for my regular walk, the park was closed. A deer had been killed by a mountain lion so the area was deemed unsafe. My friend and I went out to breakfast instead. I added blueberries to my pancake and she added banana. We wondered which deer was killed. They’re all our favorites. These are the deer that walk into my poems.

The lesbians downstairs are sad because their old dog died. We have a group apartment text thread to let each other know if a package has been delivered. And once we used it when a man tried to break in to all our apartments. Occasionally, I go rogue and make a joke on the apartment thread, but no one really jokes or laughs.

I texted the lesbians to tell them they had flowers outside their door and I didn’t want them to die in the heat. I used to have a job delivering flowers. You were never allowed to leave flowers if a person wasn’t home, for this reason.

One of the lesbians texted back off chain, that their dog had died. That’s what the flowers were for. The next night I saw her mid-phone call on the porch smoking and crying. We’d never touched each other before, but I walked up and hugged her on the way into my apartment.

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Last night I dreamt I was pulling a hair out of my arm, and I kept pulling and what came out was a piece of ginger. I was upset I had ginger growing in my arm, but no one around seemed to care. Then I noticed my other arm had something inside it too. Again, I pulled. This time I extracted a tiny yellow and green kitchen sponge. I was freaking out that I had miniature sponges inside me. Again, no one cared. I couldn’t tell if it was real or I was going crazy. Jesus Christ, all I need is Moregellon’s on top of my other problems. I went looking for help and stumbled into a bodega that sold delicious roasted potatoes for $1.99, and poof, that fixed everything. I have to stop watching pimple popping videos.

I spent the weekend at a retreat for a program I’m a mentor for. At my end of the dinner table we started talking about death. I was grateful I didn’t have to make dumb small talk. I always want to go deep, even if with strangers. I said the best book I ever read about death was called Advice for Future Corpses.

Once at a low point, I was walking through NY and almost got hit by a bus because I was lost in dark thoughts. Almost dying, jump started me into wanting to live again. Here is one of the poems the deer walked into.

CALM DOWN, IT’S ONLY MONDAY

the raft is upside down

mid-air over the waterfall

we’re all the rower

contorted and afraid

falling

reaching

grabbing

as hard as we try

we can’t get hold of any part of the raft

the water rushes, deafening

refusing to quaintly babble like a brook

thank God it happened quickly

the left turn of fate

for once we don’t have time

to imagine our death with leisure

like we did all those times we weren’t dying

the deer in the forest

watch us with their big black eyes

occasionally, they blink

the straight lines of their mouths continue

to chew— attentive and detached

we tumble down first

then, the raft bounces after

a big bouncy joke on where we used to be

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