I bite at my cuticles
Instead of screaming
I scratch myself
Excoriating skin
Building resilience
I think

I watch the flush of menopausal acne
Creep up one side of my neck
And obsess, instead,
over the marionette lines
Forming at my mouth

I can see age spreading
Across me
Consuming youth
As though it were a right
Dispassionately I exercise
Lifting weight and spirits
For a while

Cursorily I remind myself
To design a life
To make it what?
Better?
What is ‘better’?

That question of
‘what does it look like’?
Success happiness joy
Stick those three on a decal
Then stick it to the kitchen wall

It won’t make it come true.
It’s just future landfill graffiti.