My routine is dear to me,
shoot me!
I’ve come to rely on routines
In the absence of external
and seasonal change

At first the adherence to routine
prompted a sense of memory loss,
as I’ve taught my memories
to accompany the patterns
of seasonal and cyclical
metamorphosis
then I found a mnemonic routine

As I like doing from time to time,
I went to see my neighbor yesterday,
one of few left in our street
She invited me to relax on her sofa,
with her cat
playing with the paper wraps
from an old hamburger,
and asked if I’d eaten
as I looked boney
gazing at my body
as trying to pierce through all my layers
I’d twined myself with

My neighbor’s apartment was right above
the former McDonald’s shop
and as desperation does to people,
she’d recently abandoned her
nutritional ideologies
for frozen burgers
from her former in-house butcher

She said she was tired,
couldn’t make plans ahead any longer
and no crops
would grow at this temperature
Even the greenhouse
that she had built
was too cold
and the glass was starting to break
Regulated temperature is fine,
when you know things on the outside are shifting,
but I can’t find myself breaking from my lethargy,
she said and asked me a third time
if I was sure I didn’t want something

After we’d shared a strong drink
we said goodbye,
embracing one another
She asked if I was sure
I didn’t want to spend the night?
Despite my yearn for another body
I returned home to fall asleep
at my regular hour
Knowing that I’d need to be somewhere
within the hour