inherent ennui

5/18/2023

on summer nights when you don't know who you are

summer makes it easy to be listless.
the heat flattens the lawn outside and
plasters you to your bed, fixing your gaze

up at the landlord-white ceiling. you
took the flags down weeks ago— guess
it flattened the colors too. you're up too

late for it to be wise, but in your defense
the sun went down far too late as well.
summer forces you to inhabit your skin

more fully; these days it seems you barely
inhabit this room. whose empty journals
sit upon the shelf? whose yarn is that,

crammed in beside them, tangling into knots?
whose makeup sits in the bag, unopened?
jars clank together as a car passes by,

blasting music that shakes the whole house.
they are not yours. you cannot hear it. you
are outside, in the sky blank as your bedspread,

somewhere in the millions of light-years of
vacuum that separate galaxies, eons away
from anything and anyone you recognize

as yourself. you hear the silence the car
leaves behind. you can taste salt, but you
don't know who was crying.