Or Perhaps We Will Never Enter Our Lives At All But Remain Always Somewhat at the Door of Things? - Johanna Skibsrud

Repeat ourselves, in the cramped and inner
chambers of our hearts, where, in ever-narrowing circles, we

rotate the room, only to wake up with the same
headache as last year, having been

stuffed, and to the same degree, by
whisky and wine;

having made the same
derisive comments about
making a living; having

recommended the same book, and championed
equally the allure of
hot-pot cooking and Sophie Calle; having

laughed at the same—millisecond too soon—point in a story that
in all honesty I've yet to hear; having

stared always, and too long, at the same
clock on the wall, the same

photograph above the same narrator's head, without
identifying a single object.

Having returned, unstumbling,
disastrously cool, seemingly

uninhabited rooms and ingested, over the spiralling
drain of the stained sink, quantities of lukewarm water,

and having stared into the open jaw of the fridge;
to the same contents there, and having

without satisfaction eaten the same sandwich. and slipped
into the same rotarian sleep: as though
head and legs swung,

back and forth, by oblique angles,
toward the same, undiscoverable
end.

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Johanna Skibsrud (born 1980) Canada
Source: Ice Floe II International Poetry of the Far North edited by Shannon Gramse and Sarah Kirk, University of Alaska Press, 2011