Five Days

Five days later.
I’m trying again.

Morning, again;
keyboard, again.

Silence — well,
almost. Space heater

and occasion cat noises
from elsewhere. Otherwise

it is just me and
a runny nose

simply relating this note
that has been repeated

and repeated and five days
later, nothing new to say.

I will not call this writer’s block.
That would imply that I think

I am still a writer, some kind
of artist at least. Beware

this self-identification,
I say.  It can trap you.

Look at me: five days since
I last tried to live up to 

my label and I hear nothing
but moving air and impatience

from a hungry cat. On social media
my friends are either cheering

their way through good lives
or dying from a case of

being America. I am 
increasingly doing neither.

I disappear instead. Five days 
from now you should stop looking for me.

Five days from now this will be
all I will have left behind.