When absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder
but instead makes it more bitter,
when dusk hits but dawn never comes,
when sunburnt skin peels away but what’s underneath
is not fresh and new and freckled but uglier,
when the wedding night turns into the memorial service,
when heartbeats are unable to be translated
because the language they come in is so foreign,
when the sidewalk is the only thing that loves
to touch your shadow, when even your shadow itself
wishes it could detach itself and walk away from you,
when breathing comes with a job application
but unemployment rates are higher than ever,
when swearing off love doesn’t even get you
in trouble for cursing, when every relationship
is a time bomb, ticking down every last second,
when you dig a hole and climb into it just to hide
but the dirt falls away and you hit rock bottom again,
when the joke candles get blown out but instead
of coming back, they stay dark and ashy,
when he leaves his sweater in your house
but never comes back to pick it up,
when your heart waves a white flag of surrender
but no one sees it, when feelings reach
their elastic capacity and have no more room to stretch,
when anxiety leaves hands shaking like an earthquake,
when the time capsule comes out of the ground
but all the secrets were eaten away by moles,
when a coma sounds a thousand times better than sleep,
when you reach the end of your rope,
do what Thomas Jefferson suggested:
tie a knot in it, and hang on.