Kind of like poetry

Written spring 2008:

Seven years ago I said: ( ) would have done a better job at life than I have. My father cried. It will be fifteen years this November since ( )'s death.

There was a line of demarcation drawn between my life before and my life after. The question was: are you looking for salvation, redemption? The answer was: no, I am searching for my own death.

Nowhere was home, that much was clear.

There were places with rain, places with sun splitting the clouds. There were places on the ring of fire, places near fault lines.

Now, the city seems no longer a myth – just a place where earth is volatile. Palms, anorexic, sway toward the ocean.

My mind's not right.*

There was a list of what angered me:

The bride and groom were in a capsule.

My ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend were in a similar capsule.

They smiled.

I smiled. The smiling exhausted me.

The sun went down and I had to take off my sunglasses.

He introduced her as his girlfriend.

She was born in 1981.

I called a sometime lover. He talked about himself.

My dress was old.

I felt old.

I only saw the past, which I couldn't get back to,

and the present, which I didn't want.

My sweater didn't match; my nails were bare.

I didn't want to get back to the past. It seemed as ugly as the present.

The future may or may not exist.

I was alone, even though I was talking to people.

There were people I missed, some dead, some far away.

I didn't want to dance.

*from Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour"