Anxiety of Ten O'Clock

Account for all the work.

Do the arithmetic: this much finish

day by day. Feel better. You feel

you're holding cats under a rug.

You balk, refuse your own assignments,

stalk reunion with your other,

lazy self, this one harnessed

in a soggy woolen swimsuit, body

doughy under puzzle straps. She asks

her one repeating question as if

what you have said definitively were

still unclear. In different ways she asks:

always a

but

, always a

what if

.

Always impossible to finish.