A journal that spends its life
           (its life solely gleaned, I might add,
           only from the laughable parts of me,
           the comic emotion, hysteria…),
spends its life in the same way any other journal might:
by soaking in the ink-blood of my pen, insultingly passive,
soaking in the same word, over and over,

and over and over,

day after day.

Incapable of knowing any words beyond what I’ve fed it myself,
it knows nothing but that one word –
and so says no warnings back to me as it records the irony,
the absolute irony,
of the day August 12th when I bought this wooden mask,
                (face of despair, an old dancer unrequited)
of the day September 23rd when I looked into it for hours
of the day November 9th when I saw it peering longingly with me everywhere
and of the day January 30th, the coldest winter,
when my face hardened into that wooden expression itself,
and wandered the snow as a clone of this Neglect.