I Wait For Death Like A Soldier's Wife

Every morning, I wake up surrounded by the carcasses of who I was in my
dreams.

Crawling with bugs and reeking of rot, I dismember them in my bathtub.

The arm of the me who became a housewife, uncharacteristically happy about it too, goes into the trash bag right next to the foot of the me who explored space with an alien surprisingly named Joel.

The torso of my life as a chef leaks fluid onto the thigh of the body viciously murdered and left to rot in a lake by my cousin.

The head whose lips kissed past lovers and uttered “I love you” so beautifully clunks against the stairs as I drag the evidence out to the dumpster.

Thud

Thud

Thud

It’s too early for this mess, and I have never been known to clean up my messes, yet every morning, I play murderer and dispose of my victims.

To live in reality means killing the versions of myself that do not optimize my existence.

ROI on a poet is relatively low, but give the poet R or SQL, and their life may yet be justified

In my dreams, my life is infinite.

Science fiction romance thrillers with all of the trappings to make the viewer roll over for just 5 more minutes.

Yet, often, my dreams betray me.

Lock me in a coffin someone is using as a coffee table so I know people can hear my screams, my pleas, my fear yet treat my prison as an accessory to their chic home.

Wake me up before my body gets the notice and leave me physically asleep but mentally awake, stuck in the liminal space between dreams and reality.

I am not who I am in my dreams, who I was in my dreams cannot survive in
reality.

So I bury my dead and bleach the blood off of the floors

Scrubbing the bathtub of the remains of who I once was, only to look in the mirror to see the face of who I am.

With my morning routine well and done, I can finally sit down and start my routine of stimulant consumption and spreadsheets.

But the rot.

The rot lingers.

It reeks.

The bugs love it.

And I just want to go back to sleep.