one drop of an eighteen-million-dollar adhd ocean

Once, I had a voice. What got in the way?

A: Her magazines, strewn hoarder-like across the Karastan

A: Her doughnuts and cats (in dark rooms)

A: Her headaches

And:

Wanton anchorage on creaky bedsprings, hippie chaperone in the next room

Lobotomization by a public-school-supplied iBook

Poem-writing to a young male with hair like an ELF-eared dog

Vespertine played loud enough to drown out relative concern

Scoffing at advertising for chem-free living at Town Meeting

Limousines to the winsome Empire State Building, Ellis Island a saturnine oversight

Houseless lesbians proposing to my mother in Union Square

Attendance to well-regarded Thai restaurants in Talbot’s headscarves

My so-called beacon’s blood smiling in the face of malignancy

Graduating in a cheap white hateful dress

Reneging on camping trips with people my age

Confronting my other so-called beacon about his drug use and apathy

Mix-CDs with my name on them from an unrequitable love

Pounding fists on the ground of play

Lilting spoons dripping bug juice

Snaps from sorority sisters strapped in vain to our vengeance horse

Unindictable table reads in the limelight

Downward spirals through headphones

Rolling Rock on leopard-print carpet

Inkwell-doodling size 4 thighs

My permaculture (smacking of leg hair, lacking in undergarments)

Spiritual scaffolding, attenuated from on high

Now, what can I express? [Driving home the death—Skirt around, do not tell of her last breath—and how you missed it, never to be by her body’s side again]

Momentum lost by the milligram—a unit best described as:

I recraft myself against the apple-pie pythoness, she who adheres to the American dream. Blue-flickering lullabies entrance her chosen father, dying for distraction, able as he is to drift off after that last draught into a night of apnea. Self-starter, go-getter, Zig Ziglar’s best bet. “I can’t believe you haven’t figured that out yet!” We’ll be seeing some interaction around here soon enough. Soon as the pots and pans are left to me to scrub the cigarette smoke off of cough cough chocolate chip cookies reek of Virginia Slims cough cough.

Loss by loss, the inkling to express anything of import departs. In its wake lies the inkling to express the all-too-expressible: real scripted plotlines, Obama-era optimism, Millennial chic-led transformations into Hitler youth haircuts, MBTI masterminds mired in dreams of 36-hour rimjobs (administered by caretakers, of course)