Spring break now, a week in D.C. in a house that isn’t mine and I’ve never needed it more. But in the early evening Ollie’s napping and my heart’s still beating for New Jersey — can’t help myself

Last week, midterms week. No jacket and no umbrella when the rain came— couldn’t help myself. Under water, soaked underfoot, dark under-eyes. Walked into the astronomy building seeking guidance from someone dry

Helpless, hapless, in the exam forgot what time it was, some kind of paranoid delusion, fatigue, confusion, a funny story on the phone to my mom 

Black holes in my vision — can that be normal? — and two ibuprofen liquid gels, like clockwork down my throat. 

Saturday before break, on the ride back from New York I caught a glimpse — my reflection in the clouded window — tired, nauseous, looking back, back—

toward the city, fading fast. I hadn’t wanted to come and I couldn’t wait to leave, but I still struggled to straighten my stubborn fingers out of its soil. Ran to the subway catch NJ Transit back, back—

toward Whitman, before 8:00, barely, for a wilted salad and a sad-empty stomach

toward vague swarms of people and the hum of the hive, half-hearted smiles — the gifts we give to one other 

toward conversations like concentric circles, never converging on a point. At the new salad place on Nassau, attempting to devise a new theory of attraction and explain away the concern on Sofia’s face 

toward the couch at Terrace, where on a Wednesday my dad called — Dead Dog, long pause. Wasn’t sure at first, how to feel or whether it was silly to feel much at all. One sad song and I folded into friendly arms, let myself cry. 

Under the bed days later I cried again, how I would at the kitchen table if I couldn’t solve a math problem

Wondering why I can’t write poetry, why I can’t write. Wondering why I feel like I have so much to say but nothing ever comes out right. Telling myself it’s alright,

To stare at an empty google doc and watch the cursor blink again and again, to try and journal — if nothing else, good to feel the words in smudged ink on my thumb and my teeth on the top of the plastic cap, biting down—

on the floor, I sat and held my breath on Saturday night. Wondered why I can’t fall in love and if I’m in love already. Wondered why I so often end up on the floor, looking up —

on the top floor of New South, night class. Holding an orange in my hands, feeling its cool skin against my palm, too self-conscious to peel it with eyes on me, I threw it out—

on a Thursday again, told myself I wouldn’t go but I did. Couldn’t hear the music, couldn’t close my fists around the words, couldn’t tell whether I was hungry or tired or just plain angry.

Realizing I’m back again, writing it all down and still nothing seems to mean anything It’s all alphabet soup

 in 12-pt font, 

bitter black bleeding into vegetable stock —

A poem or two or three, falling into one another like bodies in orbit, an essay about four-legged February, standing still— followed my frustrations to about 1000 words then decided that wasn’t right either,

I’m looking for myself in the margins of Dostoevsky and in the spaces between our shoulders and I’m coming up empty, again and again

Trying to find something beautiful about the Nassau Park Pavilion Panera, the Princeton Public Library and the Frist burrito bowl line 

Almost through my second year and I’m starting to lose my footing, topsy-turvy on icy Washington at dinner with friends and in lecture — I just can’t get my head around special relativity —

On the Amtrak back, at the speed of light, spring in Washington shrinks away — and again I’m postured toward a puzzle I can’t solve

Pieces of me in Princeton, all edge and no middle, 

next stop now —

Middle of nowhere, Zen New Jersey.