There’s a discount at the store today.
For the next 24 hours, meaning is for sale.
Buy something big enough to crawl inside of and soothe your agoraphobic existence.
Wait in the traffic, wait in line, and tell yourself that you’ve spent your life waiting for something that will be worth it.
Fill up your cart with as many things as you can, you won’t want to regret missing out on the finer things.
Let us tell you how to be. Don’t you want to feel wanted?
Tell yourself you need this to be valued.
Cover yourself in faux fur, you only need to look real.
Fight your neighbor for the must-have items; claw at their face until it’s unrecognizable, they can always purchase a new one.
Once you’ve checked out, go to the next store over,
then the next one,
keep going until you’ve spent it all.
Invest everything that makes you human in the market
every meaningful poem you’ve ever read, every drawing your parents pinned on the fridge, every touch that has made your body tremble.
Hand them to the man working at the checkout aisle.
Watch him count them and lock them in the register.
Smile, knowing that your worries have been taken care of.
Go back to the suburbs and crawl into bed.
Wash your cheap pills down with the bottle of water you bought.
Sleep dreamlessly; it’s what you paid for.
To live without the fear of a nightmare, or worse, a happy dream
of a life you’ll never experience because you can’t afford to.
Josh Reiff is a freshman anthropology major and part-time poet who is involved with the WORDS slam poetry club on University Park campus. He’d think it’d be awesome if you’d come to a general body meeting in Burrowes Room 26 from 7-9 every Tuesday, or if you could attend a slam or open mic event which occur throughout the semester and are announced on the WORDS Instagram, @wordspennstate.