Dark Matter

Not even six AM
and it already feels like
one of those days.

One of those days
you will look back upon
a few days later
and shake your head
and say it right out loud:

man, that was
one of those days.

And of course you
will know what you mean,

but someone listening
will misinterpret it certainly
and think it was an angering day
or a saddening day

when all you will be trying to say
is that the day felt stale and familiar
from the beginning, yet another day
like all of them had been lately,
and it was neither
a good day nor a bad day,

just one of those nondescript days
where you could have tossed it from a window
into a dirty pile of similar days in your back alley
and ten minutes later you’d be unable
to distinguish it from the others
despite the fact
that it had just happened
and it ought to be fresh enough to stand out.

If you tried to explain all that to that listener
they would be bored and walk away muttering.

If you tried to explain it to yourself —

how you came to have
such a monstrous pile of boring days
piled up out of sight of everyone 
behind the facade where you live —

I think you’d stop talking,
choke on words, eventually scream.
You would scream into a pillow,
into a closet, into a glass or a mirror,

thus completing
yet another one of those days.

If I could somehow split
my head in parts
and allow multitudes inside
to comfort and cleanse 
what they found there, 
I would.

Open my face
like a vault door.
Let in anyone 
who offered to help.
I would.

Asking for help
is not my thing
because in the past when I
was far less what I am now,
too often the helpers
acted more like vandals
or thieves; it is hard
to open my head now
knowing what’s been 
stripped or taken.

If I could open my present
as I have opened my past
I might find a future.

Saying that is so easy
it must be false.

Saying that is so easy
and I am not. 

Saying I will open the vault doors
of my eyes, shut the alarm
of my mouth, and then let anyone in
who offers?

Saying it like that
is like ending a story
too early. Like
killing off the hero
before they even start
the journey.

Ever rumble
with your ghosts
by your side against
real live foes? Have you
ever reached into
your pocket for 
something to use as 
a weapon and found
a family history, once sharp
but now dull along the edge?
When you pulled it out
were you surprised by
how light it felt in your
hand and when you looked
at your hand were you shocked
that all you could see was 
your bones clutching
the dear dirty book?  Did you think
you were really going to get away
from all of them? They’re
your family, dead and never
gone, and they stick by you;
sometimes you fear them
and sometimes you hate them
and sometimes they are all you have
to wield in battle. They can really
hang you up
the most, they can really
piss you off, they can really
look you in the eye.

You can’t keep going
forever. At some point
you fall over and wail
from your new place 
on the ground.  

At some point 
it becomes too much,
this aging. This failure
of parts, this damage
regime taking over.

You stare at a picture
of your parents. You understand
how it was for them, how it
is if they are still here.
You fold your head down

to your knees and do
whatever it is you do
to invoke something
to stop it: prayer,
positive thought, 

a hearty scream into your 
ailing skin. You swore
you’d be different,
you’re the same; maybe
that’s the worst part.