THIS LONELINESS CAN’T LAST FOREVER, MY PANDEMIC PLAYLIST IS TOO SHORT.
by Samantha Fain
Nothing is worth dancing for these days
so I just sit criss-cross in the club of my room.
I cry at the stunningest of things, like the discoed moon
& the thought that my bones might lose their pretty.
I romanticize driving & traffic’s camaraderie.
As a kid I wished I could PictoChat any car beside me
& frankly it still sounds like a tender invention
if we all wanted to be friends & I do, I do, I want
no creation but puppy love strung between all our metal bodies.
Every day I epiphany: I wasted my time while I was ten.
Now I’m in a rush to exclamation mark all my writing!
I’m still one of those poets who cries at everything,
but I hate how I’m starting to harden. I admit
this new heart isn’t honest. I plagiarize all my feelings.
I hear 8485 sing I haven’t seen anybody I’ve known
for a long time in mirrors & I go, yes, that’s me, I see it.
Samantha Fain is a writer from Indiana. Her chapbooks “Coughing Up Planets” and “sad horse music” debuted with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press and The Daily Drunk in 2021. Her work has appeared in The Indianapolis Review, SWWIM, Peach Mag, and others. She tweets at @smnthfn. Find her at samanthafain.com.