Though the "Best by" date

Though the "Best by" date

is well past,

and the package has a hole,

the tea still smells like apricot 

and Spring and reminds me of scones

with jam and that 

though things are not as robust as they once were,

they still have value.

Today

Today it's like when this started
I'm full of snot and aches and self-hate
Only now I'm 55, not 19,

and the recurrent URIs settled
into a stupidly-named diagnosis that make it sound like I need a nap instead of a new body.

I always hoped I could be Somebody
so the brilliant hatred of self-hate would fade like all too-bright lights
and eventually be an anecdote I'd tell in the past tense, like something I grew out of or something that just went away.

Like if you read this poem-story
and like it
maybe the hard light that shows everything I think is bad and wrong and undeserving will dim and there will be something left
worth loving.

Not Haiku & Whiny

I want to be elsewhere.

Somewhere with wildflowers 

and birds who are alive.

Not sitting here in a quasi-comfortable chair, smelling sanitizers through my mask,

looking at the ugly floor & my phone.

I attempt politeness when the doctor comes in

and tells me the test results are normal.

It's not his fault 

I am frustrated,

Or that so many previous doctors have been unhelpful jerks for the last 30 odd years.

I carry all this with me, plus this disease no one understands.

No wonder I'm beyond exhausted.

For Maia

The window's closed,

but I hear birds. Maybe

they're discussing Spring.

Written 4/2/2024

It's cold in the house.
I open the windows anyway 

to smell Spring.

Written a couple days ago

 

California Bluebirds

They say

There aren't really Bluebirds 
in California.
We have Scrub Jays, but they still mean
Spring. And I just saw one.