new year

I thought I got lucky on New Year's.

There were these girls, waiting in line for the bathroom in the pub.

We chatted, and I kept thinking to myself;

I'm chatting! I'm chatting and it's going fine-they like me, and maybe we'll be friends.

I felt so assured, after the last few months of going backwards socially.

I picked apart conversations like a peeling leather sofa,

trying to reach the wool, the centre.

I re-wrote the same feelings, a transposed

primary school punishment,

then ignored the problem completely.

I moved past loneliness in a single file line.

Regardless, the really nice girls in the bathroom didn't actually want to be my friend.

They were just strung out on coke.

I stood there longer than I needed to waiting for something else to happen.

And I really hated how much that hurt my feelings.

I long for superficiality in the everyday.

To pass houses and not look through the windows,

searching for humaneness.

Circling the shop until it's polite to leave.

Noticing something painful

and stopping exactly there.