22.01.22
2:00
the washington post reports sixty thousand missing babies smuggled off in the night, maybe, or swallowed up by the closet monsters, or left behind in sixty thousand different grocery stores, or swapped with empty blue blankets folded tight and warm from the wash in sixty thousand different hospitals.
the washington post reports
sixty thousand missing babies
in a tone that suggests we should go looking for them, bundled in our coats in the lonely cold, shouting their names over the rubble and the smoke. were they stolen by faeries, forgotten in strollers? i imagine sixty thousand people opening the blinds to sixty thousand mornings just like this one.
the sleeping pills wore off again.
rationing the kindness out
alongside the morning coffee, staring down
the houseplants we can't keep alive. the way a car crash sounds when it's just out of sight and you've run out of sugar, or bread, or butter. that little breaking point. the choice nobody remembers making.