by Dorian Kotsiopoulos
If you trip over it on the way back to bed from the bathroom,
don’t plan on falling back to sleep.
A page looks up at you from your morning coffee.
The cream curdles into a bulleted list of your mistakes.
You discuss entire sections in therapy, forgive
yourself, rip out the gory details in self-actualized zest
only to find the pages back in place, scotch taped,
superglued, bound with scapular string and spit.
You might try to revise with a Sharpie, but it rubs off
indelibly inking your wrists with slashes of black.
Bang the book on your head about the friend you abandoned
in ‘08. You’ll just get another headache.
You might wake up at 3:00 a.m. to find the book under
your pillow again. Your neck’s been cricked for years.
Dorian Kotsiopoulos’s work has appeared in various literary journals, including On the Seawall, Poet Lore, Salamander, Smartish Pace, and Third Wednesday. Her poems have also appeared in medical journals, including New England Journal of Medicine. She is a reviewer for the Bellevue Literary Review and a co-director of the Chapter & Verse Reading Series in Boston.
Hawaii Pacific Review 