The night was made for overthinking,
But lately the sunrise has stopped shedding light
On 4 a.m. angst,
Instead exposing vacant rooms.

You’re staring at a white-washed wall,
Trying to decide what to hang on it.
Eventually you’ll probably settle on something,
Anything,
After the seventh time your girlfriend tells you
How boring it looks.

But I am paralyzed in the significance
Of such insignificance,
And lately I’ve had cotton in my mouth;
I’ve forgotten how to speak
Clearly.

I am running out of time for indecision,
And everyone is turning in their test
Early.

See, life is a question I don’t have
The answer for,
And I’m having trouble seeing the point in test anxiety
For a quiz everyone fails,
Anyway.

But I’ve always been a perfectionist,
So I can’t force myself to hand it in
Blank.

Everyone knows that life isn’t fair,
So of course it’s not standardized;
We write our own.

Do I make it multiple-choice?
Fill-in-the-blank?
Open-ended?
That in itself is another test,
One about truth.

An art teacher of mine (he was a bee-keeper too)
Once told me that multiple-choice
Insults your intelligence.
He was a democrat, after all,
So maybe he’s right.

Except I missed #5,
So either way there’s still a right answer.

Maybe it would help if I weren’t so
Hung-over.
My thoughts run together in a drunken avalanche;
My mind trips over itself
In logical fallacies.

I can no longer make the distinction
Between right and wrong –
Maybe I never could.

Maybe I’ll find it somewhere
In-between.

Meanwhile, I sit cross-legged with my blank wall
In front of me,
Surround by photographs scattered
On the floor.

I might as well fill the emptiness
With the only thing
That makes sense
For sure.