Always Turning to Salt

I use the word nostalgia as though it were a conjunction, threaded throughout every poem, every line dripping in it, if not subtly, repeated like it's cheap to say it, the word itself and the idea too, completely overtaking everything I write or do. And I live in a room with it, imaginary, sitting in the cheap Motel 8 of my mind, the boarding-house of memories, the birthplace of many and all regrets, and I lay in my bed and smoke despair, wondering how I got from here to there. I watch the telly, the history channel, it speaks to me soothingly and reminds me how I got here. The year is 2010 and I'm wandering the halls of a psychiatric ward that came highly recommended. It's 2006 and the summer is so warm, the streets of Paris are so dirty, my best friend just moved to Tennessee. It's 2013 and I'm holding my newborn daughter in my arms as she needs and needs and I give and give, wanting nothing more than for her to stay needy and small. The scenes blur through on the television, hazy through the static of forgetfulness and lost detail, and there is an earthquake in Nostalgia every day. This living in the past, Lord it's just not sustainable, my walls are crumbling and the TV reception keeps getting fuzzier. I'm lost as to how to stop using that N word, lost as to how to stop missing those miseries, embellishing and sugar coating a past in which I never really lived, always looking backwards, turning to salt over and over, always living in this room. The door locks from the outside, and I never thought to ask who had the key.