2AM SCRUTINY

I am writing poems and drinking wine out of plastic cups.

This has become my life,

sometime in the last four years

when I decided I would rather sit in dark rooms

and burn holes in my throat than speak to people.

My mother thinks that I am depressed,

that I picked up a drinking problem in Europe.

Maybe she’s right.

I am counting all the different ways to tell someone

“I’m busy”

but it always comes out the same,

“I’ve turned into a haunted house and I don’t have room for any more ghosts.”

I am writing poems and drinking straight out of the bottle,

though these poems sound more like eulogies

tonight.