Fatigue and Sickness

Ooooh, so tired.
No matter how much sleep
I get, it's always the
same bald sense of fatigue.

The cat won't wake up
under the umbrella of curtain.
She lies all day, barely turning,
then with hardly a cat stretch of
arm, she gracefully slides
from sill to side table
to floor to mosey over to
her kibble dish, then back to
her perch to sun herself in the
graying light of a rainy
spring morning.

I'm hardened into this couch
like someone broke by madness.
I've broken the clock and the
bank of all the minutes I've
wasted lying here in this dark
room with a tv drone and a
time bomb to help me
remember my pills.

Not even wanting to hear
your footfall on the stair,
for you to come home from
the piano lessons you give to
hyperactive children and
fascinating men and women,
to attend to me with food
and drink and a little bit of
talk before you must take
your daily nap.

I'd rather be alone like
this princess kitty who
bristles at my hand, who
jerks awake with peeping
eyes and stiffened back,
and I look at her and say,
"Sorry, darling, I was
feeling a little guilty."
(Perhaps how you feel
when you must attend to
your own needs.)

Then I lay back down,
assume the position, and
wistfully, irritably, uncomfortably
fall into the arms of Morphée.