Lost Living
Amanda Morris


Light streams through cracked curtains
Lighting up the woven jungle scene
With a brightness I’m not ready to face.
My next article rolls around in my head
“ Insomnia Research Perks Up”
Scattering dust bunnies
Across a plain of dead thoughts
And gleaming skeletal failures.
I have no choice now but to rise
And face today’s lions.
I push back my sheets, loathing the creak
Of my swollen joints,
One too many beers I suppose-
I still have a spare
On a string outside my window.
Something shifts in my room-
And then I hear it.
Warning! Warning! You’ve lost control!
My head rattles-
“ See through a haze
To understand a voice,” I mutter
To a biting wind
Shifting on the bench
I don’t remember sitting on last night.
My hand brushes an old phone box
On the wall, a color only someone
From the sixties could love
While puffing with belov’d strangers
In someone’s basement.
I press the round red button,
And pull words out of my puckered mouth
Pushing them into the receiver-
“ Teri, I’m lost again.”



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