Now

In the fashion of so many
sisters in the Get It Camp

I take mental note of the exits,
approximate the jump scare

triangulate how it would go down
in a flash. So ultimate

so unspoken, the pumping call
and response. The bumping of chests

and checking of pulses. The depth
of a throat. So this is what they mean

by environment, sitting amidst
the debris of previous fallen attempts.

Any moment now, we tell ourselves.
We talk to ourselves incessantly

tell ourselves things like
we just need to settle

down, that's all. Some of us
had ants in our pants.

We were the ones
who didn't fully adapt.

We turned time
into instruments of self-torture,

inventing chits to overshare
our whereabouts, measuring

our absence in the accrual
of pink paper slips to remind us:

While You Were Away
life went on without you.

We become the masters of slack.
We find cracks. We slip in.

Let ourselves go, come what may,
We let things go too far,

Swear off the stuff, time and again,
even if it means a trade-off, a nip,

just a little hand stuff. Bargaining
ourselves into dark corners,

no exit strategy, the surge
of no turning back

and the need to feel slammed
back against the wall.