Brutal

How brutal life is that I have to drag my corpse out

And disassociate on the park bench next to the

Empty children’s playground like some dying cat

Slinking away to spare a few witnesses from their last

Undignified existence. How brutal that I’ve lost

All tears to grief the situation, except the self-pitying

Snivels at my own predicament — not even four walls

To call my own to shelter the privacy of breakdown.

How brutal that I only have a pounding cotton-mouthed

Migraine as the only living pulse through my husk

And yet I have to go to work yet again tomorrow

On a packed unfeeling train with the too-warm AC 

Facing yet another emotional showdown and 

Unrelenting always urgent always important work.

How much labour must be wrung out from the dead

Before our bodies are allowed to surrender to the

Clutches of such enormous sadness and drown in

The graves that we have dug with our own fatal flaws?