I can't lift a finger

socks and jeans
warm from the laundry
I can't lift a finger
to put them away

twelve o'clock hits
sleep is a lazy toad
too tired or despairing
to hop into bed

I am a product
of an incendiary union
collage artist and high school girl

the birth was a superb bait and switch
I never found the mother I wanted
in adoption, I wanted the mother I got

I was in the suburbs then
when that meant
exclusive, shielded, gated
with no gates
only dreams of Avalon on a hill
white, white birds swooning
circling inward
to the dead-end
of a short, suicide spiral