claustro-manic vacancy

i crashed my car last night
as snow blanketed and buried.
flakes coating streets already unsafe in so many ways
sliding backways and sidewards.

a cab driver was robbed on my corner last week.
i woke up to detectives at my door.
hard working man gets beat half dead for money
outside my window twenty minutes after i got home.

if it's at all possible the world is getting even smaller
walls press in like sides of a cardboard box studded with tacks.
top flaps keep slicing my eyes like manila paper cuts under a fingernail
not enough packing tape in the world to close up these wounds.

my uninsulated windows let in the cold
while project heat forces naked slumber and cold pillows shield my eyes.
blinds broken and too thin to keep out the days i just want over.
kitchen floor crumbles daily--shards of linoleum pierce my feet.

i had a conversation with a man who broke my friend
not knowing with whom i spoke i thanked him for the drink.
i smiled when he said i was beautiful
and we danced in a sweaty group of thirty like teenagers.

boy with blue eyes talks about love
then leaves town while i break.
soulmate comforts with voice but follows with veiled insult
the one i want to laugh with prefers anonymity drenched in miscommunication.

constant blaring rock music shouts from the house across the street
no band was playing when i was looking for a place to lay my head.
a friend called me a hoodrat at heart the other day
i can't say i would disagree.

i stayed in bed all day today
ate my bowl of cereal reading friends poetry
and writing my own through a shroud of tears and tears and tears
the wind shakes my windows and sobs shake my shrinking frame.

fairweather friend sends me videos of her greyhound at the dog park with my pitbull
my heart shatters every time i turn the key in my door and there is nothing.
no ecstatic red nose waiting for his mom to snuggle with
there is only an empty space where his cushioned brown corduroy bed belongs.

a purple candle in the scent of shiraz was sent careening across the rug one night
spilling violent beautiful wax that i stare at every day.
there is no couch no chairs no table no pitbull no home feeling
but plenty of room to fuck on the carpet.

beautiful 3-D artwork adorns a wall with cracks and stains
a fraction of my thousand books rest their sacred leaves atop my fridge.
dollar store curtains do nothing to shield me from danger because danger
is myself in this state in this mind in this place in this world i can't seem to crawl out of.

gusts and gales hit these unstable panes and i feel like dying
i feel like erasing the past year of my life and i take out my pencil to do just that
and someone has chewed the fucker to bits probably while rolling on E.
so i stare at the wall and wait for tomorrow.

i contemplate how the people i feel close to i have known for short burts of time filled with life
how the people i feel far from ask me why i'm a trainwreck,
and why i'm so sad,
and why did i leave and why am i back here and why and why and why.

i don't have these answers and i don't want to feel far from home
i despise the distance and the drafty windows, 
the broken floors and the miscommunication but i need them all
just like i need air and water and sex and wine and books and pens and ... and you.