fell too asleep for training in my warm stale
festering sheets gone unchange for too
long but who cares? I woke groggy
after dark and staled up my mouth
with coffee an apple to be healthy,

and TamsonCat growls her incantations to
night pressing on our lit-up toy
box house, I drink a glass of water
and write emails where I'm upbeat
& creative, change into
black checkered PJ pants and think about

ethics - Toby lives by a code of
ethic he devised for himself and that
makes him a very good man, my
boss won't hire anyone with a name he
can't pronounce and sees my pinkwhite
Euromutt skin as 'Australian.'

I sit online for a bit and look
at novelty t-shirts, fed the fish still
overcome by inertia in their clean bare
tank, collect TamsonCat from the bed
and strip the warm sheets & there's
a fading reflection of me in
the window I don't recognise and

outside the door
I can hear my dog's claws ticking
at the floorboards
although
she died months ago.