(re) capitulation

and so today was a
slow itemization of things
that turned against me:

i woke from a dreamless sleep
into a pellucid morning,

fear dripped into my veins
from the invisible machine
of nightmare,
had to turn the light on
and stare at the shadows
until they melted back,

then
the necessary cigarette
left me
as always
unsatisfied

and doing nothing
(a lot easier
than it sounds)
was justified by
reducing it to
small somethings,
like reshuffling the books
because the height of The Idiot
is smaller than that of
The Devils,
and i don't know
maybe i felt something
a little like sympathy,

and then
the cat hissed at me
though i had done nothing,
and i saw my fear
reflected in her eyes,
a weird shimmer
like the lake of heat
you might see
over summer asphalt,

for a damned second
heart pulpy in my mouth
like a bitter fruit
i stood staring at
the ridges of her palate,
thought how they looked like
the marks the waves make
in the sand at the beach.

i rubbed my tongue over my teeth
and prepared to hiss back,
but the rumble and mutter of a truck
shoving by importantly
on the street outside
sent her fleeing
for the nearest couch.

the sun went behind a cloud
and didn't come back.

then,
now,
this,

a shaky column of words,
a half of a pillar
in the rubble of the
ruins of the day