An Exercise in Self-deprecation

You are staying at your poet friends’ place
while they take their two daughters to Disneyland
when you wake to the bumping
of moth against lampshade. Because you are
alone at the bottom of a dirt road in a forest north of the city,
you pad on the balls of your feet to the far end of the room,
where the moth now twitches
and flips on your library copy of Lust. You are
annoyed, really actually annoyed,
to have woken up to this cliché, which is dying
in the most dramatic way possible short of a candle flame.
When the twitches stop, you slide the body
into the kitchen trash and go back to bed,
where you peruse YouTube videos like
‘‘The Six Lesbians You’ll Date Before You Die.’’
Only the dog knows the extent of your neurotic yen
as you check your texts again, and again
are confounded by I just need some time alone
that is all I am sorry, sent at 11:58 last Wednesday,
and the dog circles this same spot three times
then goes counterclockwise before scrunching
the entirety of his big body onto a tiny rug.
The dog sighs into his paws
as you place your phone on its face
and laugh inconsolably into memory foam.
You laugh yourself to sleep.