I haven’t left the house in weeks,
limping room to room, forgetting
what I came for, wearing unwashed
the goose-turd green flannel pajamas
I inherited from my mother-in-law’s awful
second husband. On Netflix last night,
a precociously ironic five-year-old
protested, “Of course, I love popcorn!
I’m not an animal!” Then again,
I myself might be an animal, one
of the dumber ones unfazed by guilt,
that useless emotion, arranging
& rearranging the bottles of hand lotion
you left behind & imagining I’m
now living inside my favorite meme,
a hermit’s cave, a sign scrawled
above the entrance, “free hugs!”
