How I Get Ready

What song will they play if I don’t come home tonight?

I wished someone would write a song for me, then someone did

but it was a song berating me; it was called “Actually, Ashleigh”

and I think of the cruelty of songwriters as I get ready —

how their music makes their words sound better than they really are

how our feelings make music seem better than it really is

and how the difficulty of getting ready is a pure, bitter difficulty

like calculus. In the back row a once-promising student cries.

What will my face become? Strings of demi-semi quavers.

I partition the day into a wall of smaller

more manageable days, each of which goes black

as I billow past in my bike pants and cleats

and I see I am not getting ready at all; if anything

I am getting unready, I am trying to be made lovely

by the glow of an Adshel in the rain.

In youth we are told we will rise up whole

from our baths, from the comforting midwinter soup

of our sadness. We will not devour ourselves tonight.

The dark broth will always drain from us.

Our legs will drain from our bodies and into the ground

and our footsteps will pour into the future. But the future is hidden

under thick nests of fat beneath the streets.

It pours out to sea, gently warming the earth

and its creatures. I go down there as I get ready

and the air turns over, gently exposing

its soft underbelly. My going-out clothes are waiting for me

ironed smooth, laid out like a disappearance.