Squalor

-There is nothing worse than too late.
Five o’clock in the morning
rummaging through the squalor
in your room. Blinds drawn,
darkness keeps a residence there.
There was a note you wrote yourself
one morning as a thought occurred,
it had something to do with something
perhaps you wanted to remember.
Sometimes you write notes to try to forget.
“It’s funny,” you think, your hands
disappeared into the littered white,
little red ink scrawls floating
like the debris of a wrecked voyage.
You couldn’t find a thing,
even if you were trying to.
That’s why you write things down
to remember, only once in a while,
to forget, the bad nights spent
alone in the squalor and the darkness.
You write those down in red, cast them
out among the landslide of white.
Then you wake some morning, with a feeling
there was something you wanted to remember,
you plunge your hands, wrist deep
into the squalor, the blinds blown by the wind,
then they settle, keeping out the light
and as you search, you remember,
you’re alone.