It’s never easy
starting midstream,
when your joints squeak like old vinyl.

Worse to end just as you begin,
editing hope into bullet points,
buffing your portfolio like a coffin lid.
You kneel to metadata while the holy algorithm decides
if you're human enough to be blessed.

Better to read old Nabokov,
nap in your robe
(the good one with pockets),
wait for the mail like it’s 1998
when catalogs still mattered.
Let purpose dissolve, like the vitamin
you dropped in the sink.

You failed to fail,
which sounds noble
but feels more like
accidentally surviving.

So drift toward the grocery by the newsstand,
nod to the pretty barista with the knife-edge bangs,
pretend the papayas mean something.

You’re the median of middle-aged.
Your knees, both traitors.
Your dreams, reruns.

These lines limp
like your fifth attempt
to rebrand the layoff as a sabbatical.
Don’t derail, just project
your better self on a screen.
Crop the hair, dim the lighting,
hide the existential dread
behind a well-placed emoji.

Let rhyme stutter
like a pull-string toy,
half-broken,
slightly too cheerful.
Feet unsure, eyes fogged
(by pollen, by memory, by news).

There’s no noir here,
no brooding detective,
no dame worth lighting a cigarette for.

Just this:
the echo of effort,
forms half-filled,
where even your name looks uncertain.

So let’s call it.
Let’s bury the draft,
archive the ambition,
delete the app.

End
where we never really
began.