The Life You Want
Everywhere you look you see it
thriving: runs by most mornings in Spandex; rests
in a hammock sipping tea
each afternoon. The songs you adore rush
mellifluous from someone else’s mouth.
A Humvee, a log cabin in Montana, a model’s body—
a life collaged from chic magazines
tattered and taped to your refrigerator.
Yet, your sorrows continue to grow faster
than your garden. Self-help books explain
how flowers understand serenity better, so you resent
their beauty, their quiet knowledge. Anxiety
a dog that always needs walking. Envy a hive
in your head. You repeat, again, the angelic
affirmations. Then forget it all
standing in line at Wal-Mart, wanting to kill
the clerk because she’s slow, hating
the guy in front of you for buying so much stuff, pissed
because they haven’t discovered a way
to squeeze enlightenment into your shampoo; because you
can’t order it off a drive-thru menu, get it
SuperSized. You’ve seen the life you want
pulling fruit from its orchard, losing weight
and making friends, humming sweetly
on the other side of the hedge—giving freely
what you can’t understand. How? and Why not me?
rotting like bruised apples inside your head.