Christian Ward

The Anxiety of House Keys

You wake shivering
the wrong month off your skin.

The shower is grotto-cold,
you brush your teeth with cereal.

You slurp houseplant food,
gnaw on Lego bricks.

Unpaid bills stain the dining table,
you feed other people's pets.

Important emails scream
from the confines of your inbox.

Colleagues treat you
like a fracture that never heals.

Every birthday is a piñata
of disappointment,

people fling looks like hail.
You collect them like baby teeth.

You always get crumpled swans
instead of cards. They never fly.

Once, you dropped the house keys
in the aquarium to see what might hatch.

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in Dodging the Rain, Blue Unicorn, The Seventh Quarry, The Dewdrop, Bluepepper, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Amazine and Rye Whiskey Review.