Waiting Room

An Exit Strategy

Waiting Room

By Eve Zennarrow

Whenever I attempt to drown
my relentless thoughts,
I learn that the most terrible of them
are excellent swimmers.

I tried to run away from you.
I let you out of my arms
and launched you into interstellar space,
putting light years of distance between us.
But like Voyager, you still
keep sending signals back home.

Your voice is embedded
in my syntax, and it
wants to change me;
to change what I become next,
to prevent me from finding
my own language.

You keep making maps
to the wounds we never had,
and you won’t let me solve
the Ultimate Question riddle.
You won’t let me
find my 42.

Doesn’t it seem, sometimes,
that the magic 8-ball has
just one answer for us: abandon hope?
Why am I an NPC in this
game of life?

I feel like a vampire of cognition,
feeding on my own futility.
Always starving…
One moment I’m infinite,
and another I’m tripping
on a wrinkle in the rug.

Almost sold my guitar
to my next-door neighbor.
Almost gave up on a dream.
But then I remembered —
I was asleep when I wrote this.

Don’t you think it’s time to put another
picture on your home screen?
Let go of this beautiful confusion.
Give me back my melody,
I want to dance myself away.

In the end,
the end of all waiting
is all I’ve been waiting,
and all waiting ends today.