Challenge: Play with the sestina.
How It Is Here
I keep trying to give things up — sugar, booze, useless anxiety — and so far I’m only successful at the worry. Most of it, anyway. As long as you don’t count the sweaty dreams, where I’m always alone and late and lost. TBH, I’m alone a lot of the time, but that’s okay. Up here on the 3rd floor, 50fuckin7, sweaty is reserved for the 9-5 anxiety of saying the wrong thing. So anyway, I’m more successful if I stay silent. Shit. “Success” is just another moving target. Like “alone” no longer means lonely. And hey — is there a way to make myself a moving target? I’ve got to get up from the damn desk, burn off the stress around my waist. God, I get sweaty thinking about my metabolism, sweaty ruminating about other peoples’ successes. All this emotional work makes me nervous, like I’m Sisyphus, pushing a big old boulder, alone on the mountain, mad, shouldering it up up up through vertical impending disaster, all the way to the top … Fuck it. There’s no way I can go on with that metaphor. Like I said, I don’t sweat anymore. I sit. I can’t make myself get out of this damn chair. When I imagine success it belongs to someone else. I’m not lonely per se, and a little yellow pill eats anxiety down to nearly nothing. And why worry when everyone’s crazy anyway? It’s fine to be old and mostly alone. I got this, folks. No actual sweat. I suppose, looking back, I’ve been successful, getting myself up every morning. But what are you up to? I’m anxious to hear about your successes. Anyway, sweetie, don’t sweat it. Write back if you can. I’m fine on my own.
