Bread and rice

The People in this place, they did not want real conversations,

conversations about jobs or school or about where we were living.

They just wanted to talk about how inspired and creative they were.

But

I could no longer find inspiration in the places that I used to,

in the rails lined up like snow white caterpillars on the backs of toilet tanks

or at parties where everyone was an artist 
and you and thirty other people are crammed into

a kitchen with the D.J. having long forgotten the names of everyone around you.

One girl went to India and all she ate was bread and rice

and one girl was in the bathroom snorting MDMA

she is asking for a bill so she can snuff up some of that inspiration that I lost so long ago.

It’s Monday night and I’m looking at this girl in her punk rocker skin

with a face that looks so much like my own and I get tired.

They were every girl I had tried to be and at every place I had ever been,

except for India,

where I too would have only eaten bread and rice