Sad Poems For Dark Days

Before the Buzz

What if morning begins

before the alarm,

with the body already braced

for the sound that will accuse it?

At 6:10, the phone shudders

against the wooden crate,

a trapped insect

insisting on one more failure.

I reach without looking.

The screen blooms - 6:11, three missed chances

inside one minute.

The room stays dark

as if darkness has weight,

as if it has learned my name

and pressed its thumb against my chest.

I silence the alarm.

The silence does not lift.

It settles deeper,

a second blanket,

a hand over the mouth

of everything I meant to become.

---

The Seam

The pillow has a narrow wet seam

where my face kept turning

without finding sleep.

Salt stiffens the cotton.

One thread has come loose,

curled like a small white nerve

against my cheek.

The alarm waits on the floor,

its blue numbers blinking

6:30, 6:30, 6:30,

though I have already lost the hour.

I press my thumb

into the damp place.

It gives back nothing - no answer,

no clean beginning,

only the cold proof

that the night passed through me.

From the hallway, light enters

under the door,

thin as a blade

and just as useless.

I tell myself: rise.

The word falls flat.

The pillow keeps the evidence.

The seam keeps opening.

---

Hallway Light

The hallway bulb has been on

since someone forgot it yesterday.

It reaches the bedroom

in a pale rectangle,

stopping three inches

from the bed.

The alarm buzzes again.

I let it buzz.

Its vibration travels

through the floorboards,

up the bed frame,

into the soaked edge of the pillow.

Nothing warms.

Not the light.

Not the hour.

Not the hand I lift

to cover my ear.

A moth circles the bulb

until it drops

onto the runner carpet,

its wings folded shut.

I watch it lie there

and envy the stillness,

then hate myself for envy.

The hallway keeps shining

without entering.

---

Morning Gravity Scan

At 6:45, the alarm is face down

beside a glass of water

gone warm overnight.

I begin the Morning Gravity Scan:

Can my fingers close?

Can my feet carry

the small, brutal distance

from mattress to door?

The pillow seam is wet again.

I do not ask why.

The hallway light waits

with its familiar fever,

bright but unable

to touch the skin.

I count the floorboards - one, two, three - then lose the number

inside my breathing.

The phone buzzes.

A message gathers

behind the dark screen.

I leave it there.

Some mornings, gravity

is not the pull toward earth

but the force that makes

a body refuse its name.

Still, my heel finds the floor.

---

After the Alarm

The alarm has stopped,

but its echo keeps working

inside the walls.

The pillow lies open

at the seam,

a small gray mouth

holding what the night released.

Under the door,

the hallway light remains

cold enough to preserve

every object it touches:

the glass,

the phone,

the shirt on the chair,

my hand curled into the blanket.

I stand only halfway up,

bent beneath the morning

like a question

no one has answered.

Then the light shifts - not warmer,

not kinder,

only wider - and reaches the pillow,

the floor,

the place where I am still breathing.