I’m on the floor, curled into a ball,
and even though I should be getting ready
to go hang paper dolls and swing
in the park with the perfect willow tree
we found on one of our magic rambles,
I just can’t get up.
Earlier today I was supposed to go drink silent wine in the verdant cathedral
but I was feeling too polluted even for Orestes.
It’s been two years
– two years, already? Gods, how is that possible? –
since my life fell apart;
a pink slip is a pretty shitty way to start off your Anthesteria weekend
and now the festival’s come round twice again
and I still haven’t found a fucking job.
I feel worthless, incapable, a drain on everyone
and I feel myself pulling away from the things,
and the people,
that matter most in my life,
so I don’t drag them down into the bog of eternal stench along with me.
It’s been weeks since I’ve made offerings to the Gods,
and my shrine has a coat of dust to prove it.
I haven’t written anything decent in twice as long,
and the group I run online is coming apart at the seams.
It’s all my fault; no matter how hard I try,
I keep failing you, my Lord.
Once you called me your Worthy Bull,
and now I can’t even get my ass into the shower.
I don’t understand it, why do you stick around?
How many more ways are there for me to prove I’m not deserving of your love?
I’m jolted out of my melancholic torpor by a shrill siren from the hallway:
my neighbor is cooking again, with the billowing black smoke and stink of burnt fish to prove it.
When I get back inside I stand before my Dionysos shrine and chuckle.
“Not exactly subtle, are you?”
