During my lost year — which stretched
approximately from summer’s burgeoning
to the following year’s equinox —
I became wind-blown husk,
a shadow of a shadow of my
very essence’s shadow.
What they don’t tell you about
losing
so much time to being
unbalanced,
is how hard it is to find
the water for your final drowning
or how quickly the cops
are dispatched to your
city-centre bonfire
or when you’ll snap back
to your old self after the blues
or the shame in the aftermath
juxtaposed with the guilt
of alarming any citizen in sight.
Plenty of advice gets thrown around
but there is no blueprint. And by God
are there pieces to put back together.
I envy the ordinary, dream of
inhabiting the most boring of life.
I want to be the tiniest cog,
insignificant, out of sight.
— from Juniper Volume 7, Issue 1