All the Boredoms in the World
I forget if young girls still sleep
with their boredom beneath their pillows
until a boy says, I love you.
My mother planted her boredom
in a garden but never said what grew.
There’s a pattern developing here.
No one is allowed
in the basement of sleep
but an old nun sits at the door
and sells postcards with a colorful,
but badly lit, photograph of it.
There are times when boredom is a hand
over a flame until the smell of burning flesh.
For miles that night, silverfish, dead, floating
at the surface, a piece of the moon on each.
I drove past people looking up at the roof of a bank,
arms motionless at their sides,
a staggering scene of languor.
It’s always a warm afternoon
when things like this happen,
a man on a roof preparing to jump.
