Monday

sometimes your whole life feels
   like a monday.

you hate admitting that you're
   living for friday afternoons
     and the borrowed time
     in your car, spent driving,
   not knowing a destination
     other than anywhere else
     but here and now.
it hurts on the sunday
   summer nights with a
     rain so cold it
     fogs your glasses:
   the glow half-glimpsed
   through the mist you wipe away
     is more real
   than anything else
     in your eyes.


you never really
   fit, square peg, into
   the social sphere--
     pretend all you want
   that you've sanded
   away your difference,
you can always tell that
   under the caffeine and
   coronas that you won't
     ever match their
   expectations.


you can't understand why
   they want you recast
   in their grave images.
but your dark hope in rain
   is far, far more potent
   and real than their
condemnation by sunlight.
   their indifference reduces
     them to peeling triptychs,
   and they see this slowly,
     deeply misted in their minds.
and your sudden flashes
   of what they deem irrationality
     are the truth,
   but they deny you
   because you make them much
     too uncomfortable
   just by existing.


so you will never fit.
you will never play the
   part that they want you to,
     despite your desperate
   imitation of their
     artifice of life.
though you will play by
   their rules, you will
     never lose their game;
   but you cannot ever
     win it, either.

and it's so very, very
     hard to say that it doesn't matter
   when it cuts you to the quick.


but i want you to know
     that you're not alone.
i want you to know
     that on rainy monday mornings,
   when you wake up and feel
     misplaced,
   that someone is thinking of you;
     know that you are more real
        than anything else
             in my eyes.