Sitting Alone In Thinned Out Rooms

There are fewer pieces of furniture
in this tiny apartment now.

More white paint exposed.

Scuff marks on floors and walls
left behind by a hasty move.

An emptiness you wouldn't find
in a thousand unfurnished rooms
combined.

Meanwhile I take inventory of
what's left .

My eyes land on my dead
grandmother's telephone stand.

My two year old cat sits upon it
with its limbs tucked under itself.

A sign of a coming storm,
so the myth predicts.

God, is this how it goes?

Once cluttered rooms thinned
out by lost love.

Or wholly cleared out by
plain old death.

Remember that something'll perch
upon your furniture
one day when you no longer
exist.

As for the myth about the cat's position,
it seems to me there is always
a storm arriving.

Look around real good.

Weep hard.

But then give it another
whirl.

It's the only way to fill up
a goddamn room
again.

Balking

Is it really brief ease
that we want
or complete erasure?

Do weary minds desire
merely a lullaby
or total annulment,

but fearing finality,
balk,

and choose
impermanent pauses
instead?

war every night

some battles are fought
in tiny rooms
on cold, empty sheets

the unbeatable enemy: singularity

saturating its victim's soul
w/shell after shell
of emptiness

honeycomb of pain

someone asked me where
all my loss is stored

i told them my loss
shoulders its way
through membranes
of cells

nudging the nourishing nuclei
out of the
center ring

& there it sits
in each unit
like a bottomless
dark eye