Clothes littered in piles
around the apartment.
Another day of stale air.
Bodies not moving with time,

Pain pressing into her like
unrelenting weight. It’s been
over a year— so many nights of
insomnia, so many tears and
gritting teeth, dreams disturbed

by restless worry. She doesn’t
want to be motionless. She wants to
dance on the edge of poems again,
feel fire
in her hips, walk on street-corners &
admire the faces of strangers, the
windows of thrift stores & bookshops.

She wants to paint out her soul & roll
like a nightingale into song. But here
is the heating pad, the medicine, the
now cold cup of coffee. & she is too
tired to get up from the sofa to
warm it up, too weak to lift her eyes
to the moonlight through trees & smile.