Self reliance at six

I can’t tell you
That sleep rarely finds me
Thoughts coiling tight as springs
Releasing just as I begin to nod
Jolting me back
To the reality of my inescapable body
Sweat pooling on my skin
Rooting me to the same place
No matter where it is I lie


I get up and walk around
Returning to sodden sheets
A damp pillow
I choose the dry side


•••••••••


Too many nights
I woke to her
The thudding from upstairs
The wedge of light beneath the door
She wasn’t alone


She was never alone
She was three bottles of wine
And a night at The Lamppost
And a string of hims
Whose faces I never learned
She misnamed my disdain jealousy
Too broken and sick
To see


••••••••


She wore her age badly
Or maybe it was wearing her
A pinch at her lips
A sink to her eyes
Before she was forty
But claiming my youth misspent


I stashed coins like years
In a box beneath my bed
The metal unable to be stolen from me
Hoping someday I could transmute them
Regain the time taken
By self reliance at six


••••••••


I think about how I’m like her
The mirror giving nothing away
I am Athena hatched from my father’s head
A goddess of too much wisdom
And war
But she is in my voice
Unaccented and tumbling from my mouth


I only remember seven words
Though I’ve forgotten their sound
I still feel the sharp cold edge of them
Against my neck


••••••••


I look younger now
Than she did
I’m spending what I saved slowly
Or perhaps I’ve learned to grift
Short changing the clerk
As the calendar pages flip
Exchanging a single five for a ten
With a smile