I wanted to tell you something

I wanted to tell you something in order to
explain the way I feel about the Universe,
its workings, etc. But I couldn’t yesterday
—I’m sorry—I wanted only to ball
myself up and cry all day. It was the sixteenth
day in a row this happened to me, and to be

more than two weeks waiting to cry is,
especially when, the whole time, I wasn’t able to,
absolutely horrible. It was no sweet sixteen,
I’ll tell you that much. Unless at yours, the Universe
kept telling you to quit having such a ball
and that you should have died, like, yesterday.

At first, it feels like you’re winning—that yesterday
you really were meant to die, but since you still are,
you beat the system somehow. But the Universe bawls,
“No, I meant you should’ve crawled into
a hole and fucking died!” And then the Universe
punches you right in the gut, something like sixteen

times, and all you can think is, “Some sixteenth
birthday! Maybe I will go die in a hole.” Yesterday,
at times like this, is a luxury the cruel Universe
refuses to give you. This is when it’s a pain just to be,
when that Marvell line about “rolling our stuff into one ball”
just seems glib, when you don’t want one body, let alone two.

Something else that may come as a surprise to
you: over the past more-than-a-fortnight, these sixteen
days, I’ve had nothing to eat but crackers and a cheese ball.
(That’s not entirely true—yesterday
I had some candy, peppermints and Jujubes.)
Maybe this is why I’m so mad at the Universe—

because all it has ever wanted, this Universe
that gave me life, fed me from its breast til I was two,
and even before that, made a place in which I could be—
all it’s wanted was for me to take the sixteen
steps to sobriety, fold the Eight-Fold Path over yesterday
and step around it lightly, as I would an exercise ball,

but the problem is, dear Universe, there’s no way I could be
something as hard as all that, to wake up yesterday
morning, stretch over my sixteen selves, bound out like a ball.