free country

your voice on the phone in the dream
is disinterested

I miss you I say
It’s a free country

a moth falls through the door
drunk on light

the same one that
flies out of my wallet

how have I never seen him
I think

coming home

—Evan Laffer

STILL THE SAME

Wallowing
in a besotted stupor,
relishing the powerlessness
and mental disarray.
You wouldn’t want it
any other way: this thing
you unknowingly craved,
in its many stifling and
exhausting shades: strength
sapped, nerves unstrung, mind turned
to dust, familiar patterns emerge:
the worst being that you haven’t changed,
and despite every other long-cherished aspect
of your life being disrupted, and fully knowing
that it will eventually destroy you,
this thing has to be handled
delicately.

—John Tottenham