anxiety is the millennial condition, says a click-bait article I

probably read somewhere; as for my own tangles, well,

there are some parties you just shouldn’t go to.

I’m one gnarled shoot of a gnarly nervous system,

jacked up on caffeine-free cokes and celery and

clenching my teeth at that cunt of a waiter, who probably

had a panic attack five minutes ago. this basically

makes us sisters. ‘you aren’t lazy, you’re just terrified’

is the latest feel-good production of the meme machine, but

I can tell you right now, I’m definitively both – don’t pretend

they’re mutually exclusive. I can drop a potato chip

down the sleeve of my knitted jumper while I fear for

all our futures, eye the vacuum off for months feeling petrified

of filling one. but what’s a bit of dust floating around? at night

I try to dream of Putin, just to see what he’d be like,

shirtless, playing piano, I’m sprawled naked on his lounge

stringing cheese between my fingers and feeling the soft-

ness of what’s probably bear pelt tucked up under my arse.

I tell him he can sanction and annex whatever he likes,

if he promises not to meddle with my domestic affairs and

we watch porn together, tapes of Trump pissing on women,

he tells me his fantasies and I tell him mine, and when I try

to fuck him from behind he gets antsy, grunts out a veto,

something about NATO and the security of his borders and

I get bored again, make a smoothie and sit cross-legged on

my deck watching bats. things like, do you think Princess Diana

liked pineapple on her pizza? not a metaphor, but I’d be interested

either way. my earrings shake in the air like icicles in an earthquake.

Image: Luis de Diego / flickr