"Panic Attack On The Tuesday After The Crickets Play Us Out In Chicago" by Timmy Sutton

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O atrocious

heart of endless crisis,

could you chill out

for like two seconds?

I was supposed to

do laundry today,

but again that impossible parade

of small miseries banging

their drums and wailing on trumpets—

how does one shut the window

to music? Even when

they’ve heard the song

encore before? Let me

tell you a secret

you already know:

I love to listen

to an album on repeat

until I can’t fucking stand

it anymore—eventually

I never go back.

I’ll do this forever

until some day when

suddenly I won’t. Know I know

I’ve made you what you are, and I’m sorry

but that’s no excuse

for the dramatics,

especially when we can both see

I’m running out of things

to count in this room.

Maybe we can come to

an agreement

in another life—

the next one or

the next one after

I won’t be so easy

to drag along.

I’ll be a cricket in summer.

I’ll play my own song, heartless.

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Timmy Sutton (he/him) is a person who writes, analyzes budgets, and misses his friends and family from Springfield, IL. Some of his stuff is in (or forthcoming from) Taco Bell Quarterly, Hooligan Magazine, Rejection Letters, and some other places you can find all of at https://linktr.ee/timmysutton if you really wanna. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter @timothy_matthan.