Upgrades

by Troy Jollimore

I don’t love you anymore.

I’ve been working on learning to love myself.

My therapist is helping me with this.

Also, I’m in love with my therapist.

Her method includes wearing a very short skirt

and sitting with her legs apart

while we talk about my unreasonable childhood,

the friends who betrayed me, the various pets

that mocked me and abandoned me.

I don’t want to live forever anymore,

only until the next Super Bowl,

which is when my subscription to Cat Fancy expires.

I no longer want to own things, I want them

to stream through the universe like spirits,

immaterial invisible rainbows

that live everywhere and nowhere all at once.

I no longer want to write the Great American Novel,

or the pretty good Canadian essay,

or the tolerable Norwegian short short story,

or the shitty haiku of unknown nationality.

I’d just like to write a decent suicide note.

My last attempt read Don’t forget

to feed Snuffy, which hit more or less the right tone

but wasn’t quite pithy enough to make it into

Best American Suicide Notes 2017.

I hear they’re developing a bomb

that disappears the people completely but leaves

the UPC codes intact. I hear

the new administration is going to replace

the sky with a massive flat screen TV.

I just hope that we can all agree

on what we want to watch.

From Rattle #58, Winter 2017.