Silent bath water

The alarm jabbed me awake.

There are no good radio stations in Richmond, and no good radio stations anywhere when all you want to do is REM into oblivion. I dragged myself out of bed, cursing my favorite season for its cold shoulder.

Stumbling into the bathroom, I reached for the faucet, and wrenched on the hot water. But then I woke up. And it was not because I was taking a shower. I heard my mom singing in her shower. And I thought, wow,I don't sing in the shower anymore.

Yes, this may not sound like anything significant. But it scared the hell out of me. Singing in the shower, skipping to get the mail, dancing around your room. Smiling. Where did all of that go?

Am I really so unhappy with the good life that I have at 16, that my favorite thing to do, blast
out my lungs among the manmade rain..Is longer on my list of priorities? But then I thought.

I don't even sing at all anymore. What am I doing? Later this afternoon, during a literary magazine meeting, we analyzed an anonymous poem that I had written. If you don't know what is bothering you, I strongly suggest that you write a poem about nothing in general. If you take a second look at it, you will figure out what is killing you. the last 2 poems I have selected were about the same thing. And I didn't even know it.

Everything I write nowadays seems to be about not knowing where I am, being unhappy with society, being unhappy about not feeling part of it in the first place. Basically I am feeling like a complete fake. But to others? To myself? To all of it it seems.

And Lovely, geez. I can ruin a good thing by myself it seems. Am I crazy to sense that something had gone awry, and that I am going to be the last to know it? The sad thing is, I know exactly what I should do to make me happy. I really do. But for some reason, I just keep going on this crazy course and pulling myself further and further into a hole. All work and no play makes you want to die.