The Girl’s Distracted

i am trying to grow up and out
granting myself room to be alone
and not think about jet ski accidents,
floodlights, or the swim of sharks,
the things that use up and squander
my momentum
into stark and halted moments
i spend telling myself “hell, oh hell”
and burying my nose into anything handy:
pillows and paperbacks and certainly not
your shoulder, as i have known it prior
and can’t return, reasoning any which way,
sensibly distracting with better facets
of my waking life: mail and laundry and
other people’s rooms where i can collapse,
run myself into the ground,
into a different carpet,
while preaching and witnessing on how
confounded is the business
of breaking up one thing
and leaving all the fractions.