American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 53
Akrasia
Jennifer Snow
Home alone, after unlocking and relocking the door again
for the tenth time, he stands silent, spying on the world
through the splintered ends of his broken window blinds
as he ignores the painful grip of hunger in his stomach
and crumples the week-old grocery list in his left hand,
while letting the car keys in his right hand fall to the floor.
Her hands shaking, she flicks an ember from her cigarette,
and snuffs it out as she picks through the soot and cinders
of an ashtray, looking for half-consumed stubs hidden
by used filters or between spent matches, while ignoring
the new box of nicotine patches and gasping for air, she
holds the almost-discarded snub to her lips, and lights up.
She leans over the bathroom sink staring at a reflection
in the mirror she doesn’t recognize, and works to conceal
the ruby smears and amethyst splatters, moves to hide
the vesuvianite eruptions assaulting her freckled cheeks.
Author of a forced smile, finishing her canvas-skin, she walks
to the train stop hand-in-hand with her depraved painter.
A huddled group ties stretched rubber to lay new tracks
on their railroad-arms, digging at old wounds with jagged
nails and blistered fingers, grabbing at spoons and hunting
for needles among the tin foil and aluminum cans strewn about
the counter. Half-buried is a sponsor’s cell number. Seen.
Ignored, as they reach for the hollow skeleton of a plastic pen.
Akrasia is knowledge bearing no witness to your actions.
Akrasia is standing at a shuttered window, watching silently
from the safety of your home as the world spins out of control.
Akrasia is the knowledge of what is best for your health,
your well-being, and lacking the strength or power to act.
Akrasia is tasting blood on your fingers, feeling them throb
with heat and pain, but you just keep biting your fingernails.
American River Review
51
