staring at your phone
won’t make your boredom alleviate,
but i do it anyway.

procrastinating your projects
won’t make them arrive any slower,
but guess what i do.

stress dreaming about choreography,
about packing and school long since freed,
or any sort of event approaching at gathering speed,
doesn’t seem to help in the least,
but that’s what my subconscious thinks will help me.

~~~

i can sometimes feel the stress
in my forehead
when i’m contemplating life,
or doom-scrolling through each app
that brings me no joy, only sorrow,

and when i feel
my muscles tightened,
and my eyebrows furrowed,
and my body edging towards taking on
on a tenseness i haven’t felt since college,
i try to relax that part of my face
where the stress enters.
and sometimes it does help
(and sometimes it does not)

~~~

i make lists,
but sometimes i wonder if
i’d be a more mellow human
were i to simply
not.