DUGGAN
I get jumpy.
Really jumpy.
Stop the TV every ten minutes
because I have to quiet and reset my brain.
Pace the kitchen floor and jump up from the sofa so quick
I shock the cat if I touch her I'm so statically charged,
which is ironic because I'm never static.
I talk to myself. Out loud.
Loud enough for me to respond most times
until the monologue becomes a dialogue.
I try to give up the pills:
last three days at most
until the effort to hide my uneasiness
becomes exhausting
and jumpy becomes scattered -
scattered like jigsaw pieces on a patterned carpet -
and I go upstairs and take one with a curse,
swallowing it literally and metaphorically
(which is ironic because, well, you know)
and because I'm afraid that this time when I drop to my knees
to rummage beneath the electricity-generating sofa
I might not be able
to find a vital piece.
I don't cry -
panic instead that if I ever allowed myself
I would be unable to stop
and be taken away to be fixed,
and being taken away would break me.
I draw conclusions -
elaborate sketches really -
shaded and detailed
based solely on paranoias
and worries I cannot quell.
I worry about all of you all of the time.
Cannot sleep until I have checked through your names
and fought fears matching your situations to my failings.
Cannot sleep unless I can recall
one moment at least that day
spent with you or thinking of you.
Cannot sleep unless I can think
of one thing I have done for you
even if it was only to listen to you
(though I’ve been a parent
long enough to know
that spending time with
and listening to you
are perhaps the best of things,
or at least perhaps enough).
Cannot sleep, if not.
Which, too, is ironic
because in general
I cannot sleep -
must always be in motion,
exhausted but alert,
prowling and
surveilling
the deep.