After filing my tax return

at midnight,

I keep the light on

and sit staring into space.

It has been a bad day.

“You’re the only person

I know, who categorizes

your days: good and

bad,” they once

told me. I forget

if I told them,

I do it with weeks, too,

with months, years.

(2014 was

written right off.)

“When I’m

in a relationship,

I write it all down,”

I told

my old friend yesterday.

“That way maybe I

can learn something,

later.” We laugh. A joke.

She says it’s the same with

Bad Things, you have to

write them down, so you

can know. I agree.

But at least for me

that’s a joke too. (2014

is scarcely a dozen pages.)

My pen and keys are

speechless for weeks,

because I sit here with

the light on instead,

because I never want to write when

it has been a bad day.