Strike. A match. Strike it.

Let it float. In a glass. Of water.

Nothing moves. Ottessa is bored.
Her insides are dry.
A poetess in a red robe,
lately she drinks only lemon peel tea
and waits for disruptions of the continuous.
An odorless bout of ennui covers it all:
the dusty Jackie O sunglasses,
the half-eaten croissant,
the Christmas cards lying around
with blurry leafy backgrounds
and pets in sweaters and
Ally's puffy-eyed five-year-old,
who looks like Mathieu Amalric,
minus the cigarette.

The night all the fireflies despaired,
Ottessa starts in cursive font
but quickly erases.
She once read her nature poems
in a bookstore downtown
with a field recording of Costa Rican wetlands
playing in the background.
Rain and bird songs,
and an alligator chomping on a duck
as she laid her lines like dead bricks.

Now, of course, she wants to write of injustice,
of backstreet pawnshops and roses decapitated.
Her fake cough fills the room,
for silence is unbearable.
The page awaits as Ottessa lolls on her sofa,
wishing to be free and unattached,
a Terrence Malick woman
breezing away like wet laundry.
She imagines herself at a party she gives.
Dark lipstick, loose hair,
and her body wrapped in nothing but a towel
held by a big sparkly brooch.
There's Portuguese wine
and the bell keeps ringing
until Ottessa decides this is too much work—
better to write it, not live it.