Who needs
street lamps anyway?
I tell myself this,
after fourteen hours
of power outage.
This city is grotesque anyway.
This isn’t why
I have depression,
and this doesn’t explain
why time is
scattered all over my bed,
why aspirin is my new breakfast
on Saturdays, why
my fingertips
and nails and scabs
are distorted like that.
Fourteen hours with no light.
I look at the last candle
on my table,
I blow it and inhale the smoke,
then watch as the smoke swims in
the darkness of the room.
Maybe I’m in this darkness
for a reason. Maybe I was destined
to break and crumble and cry
and relish sedatives, only
to find light again. Light in the middle
of fourteen hours of darkness,
away from man-made things. Maybe
the street lamps were put off by
the sky to give my depression
the space to distend and deepen
and grow, only to shrink and renege.
