Day 30.
"April is the cruellest month."
Once, we got a hold / of a dictionary, crossed Love out / thinking we were being funny. / Tonight, we got a hold / of the Bible, did many things / but none that we'd ever tell our mothers.
(...)
It was a sticky kind / of night and we got / mad at all the colours / for hurting our eyes. / I wish it were March instead / or May, Sally says. Can't we put Life / on hold? Because this heart / is hurting me. It's not fun anymore, I'm serious. This time I'm dead / serious. Can't I just be one? Preferably just dead? / I think I've figured it out - anxiety is much like / being two people at once. Because you're sitting here / with me trying to finish your tea / as quick as you can without spilling / without seeming like you're in a rush / without throwing up / without blurting something ridiculous / out. Like your feelings! So that / this conversation could end, all the while / a fourth-grade you is on the ground / sobbing because his hamster just died and he has to go to school tomorrow / because he doesn't want to disappoint his parents but / he knows the children are going to be mean / to him again and it's thirteen years later, you swear / you've gotten over all of that / but somehow the memories come up in the middle of a conversation / about the weather in a café as it rains / outside so I take your hand and / you know I don't dance sober / but we come home soaking wet, laughing / at the townspeople's faces, not minding / for once what they thought. What tragedy / it must be to live without a mind / and for others, not at all.
(...)
Can't we go back to March? Sally asks again. Perhaps fast-forward to May? I mean, can't we go back to being strangers? Or perhaps fast-forward to when the storm is no longer a storm, just a word to talk about as we clear the driveway of debris? Because I don't want this anymore. I don't want rock bottom anymore. Give me the falling-to-my-death-but-spoiler!-you-don't-die-after-all part or the clawing-my-way-back-up part. Give me anything at all. Anything but / April.
- MJL







