Misery Triad
Mina Troise
→BFA ILL 2025
SANDCASTLE POEM
Something bad happens to me and I am a sandcastle.
Bird-shaped whistle full of water, warbling.
Hangnail. Unflattering color.
Poor energy flow through throat chakra, razor burn,
Taste of sunscreen,
Smell of ants.
Too much coffee creamer—irrevocable
Five alarms set for PM—ineffectual
Writing the same words again and again and feeling brilliant
Knowing I am fractionally dissimilar from everything I touch
Glass of milk half spilled-empty,
crying over it,
enough to grow one mealy, earnest vegetable.
JANUARY
The snow before my first lecture is gentle, because later it will be vindictive.
I watch through the window and pick at the sill, feeling the paint shards pinch and pinch.
Hard-boiled egg, today; I can peel away at it, and just for a moment,
feel the quiet milky humming. Tenuous, Sundays,
with all their yellowed cavities.
It is strange to cry on a day like this. I tell myself I love snow.
I tell myself that alone-ness informs my greater understanding of the human condition. Actually,
I have been prescribed alone-ness, for its medicinal properties, and take it obediently in small, controlled doses.
Save me from this viciousness, I think,
being so contemplative and deserving, and deserving,
picture of girl sitting by the window, thoughtful breathing. Deserving.
I am on the verge of solutions, but they quickly melt.
Tomorrow, I’ll slip on icy stairs,
finding that my ruminations are wasted
on all this splintering.
SPRING COLLAGE
Somewhere deep down I know that
my discomfort is amounting to something.
Poorly laid bricks rattle and buck underfoot.
Beneath my heel, a dead leaf, or a snail.
All at once I am a murderer in all the small ways that matter.
Weighed against a feather, I fantasize about how I’ll measure up
My brother is the concrete wall between my room and the master bath.
Goodbye isn’t a word we know yet.
A ring embeds itself in the meat of a finger and skin grows over it.
There’s no room for anger like mine in public.
The thing in my chest makes a good drum. The sound carries
and up ahead, I see the animal I’m becoming:
someone dumb with light and love.
Someone who grocery shops, and who, recognizing a fence,
unlatches the gate.
Mina Troise is flying around.