Forgetting’s tough.
Those mornings
after sweating under sheets,
head pressed to a soaked pillowcase,
thoughts being eaten like over-easy eggs
served on hot diner plates
in a rickety redbrick dive
downtown
speared by the sun,
pulsing,
in another wasted day—
stuck,
staring out the bus window,
circling the same
endless streets—
then dipping,
tired—
underground
to catch trains—
always waiting on those platforms,
minding the gap,
hurrying off to vomit,
working with blinding headaches
from ten-dollar bottles of red wine,
listening to Roxy Music
like a sad cliché until 1 a.m.,
smoking cigarettes
from the reserve
kept in a Ziploc bag
in the freezer,
staying up
so tomorrow
won’t arrive
looking back
at me
in the mirror
with those brown eyes
thinking:
you fucking idiot.
Now, the most enjoyable part of living
is dipping toast in warm yellow yolk
Ryan Di Francesco
Ryan Di Francesco is a Canadian writer and teacher. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax, an emerging literary and arts press, where his poetry and short fiction have appeared. His chapbook The Paper Hound was published by Alien Buddha Press, and his second, Skeleton Mine Disaster, is out now with Bottlecap Press. His poems and stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Toronto Star, The Pit Periodical, Shoegaze Literary, Bicoastal Review, ELJ Editions, Ink in Thirds, Bitter Melon, Rawhead, SHINE Quarterly, SQUID Magazine, Azarão, The Amphibian, The Page Gallery, among others.