Snake

I swipe right desperately, dreaming
of love behind glass. Swerve
left, dodge the sodden mattress
on the Jersey Turnpike,
heartchoked as we drive on
through the pouring rain. Turn UP, 
my students jeered in 2nd period,
earlier today, volleying the N-
word, F-word, words
I didn't recognize, up
above the desks, my head,
threshold for patience,
lately grown thin,
underfed like the snake
in the back of my room
(named Ronnie by students,
a nod to the Jersey Shore
character). That thing never eats
when I feed him dead mice
that I warm in a beaker of water,
and I never feed him these days.
I'm tired of teaching. Worn
to the bones of my face
which I feel beneath flesh at the end
of the day when I'm two hairs away
from losing it, all of it, totally.
Somedays my pants fit and
somedays they don't and by some
neural path I tread as a kid, this
is the ruler I use to measure
my worth, stuck in some
rut I dug years ago. I want out
of this classroom, this glass box,
this body, this city where trains
snake underfoot to take me
one dump to another. I read
the manifesto of a murderer,
a neatly typed PDF I pulled up
on my smartphone, a rambling
account of each year that took him
towards killing. What chilled
me was the way I felt the same
blind rage at my own loneliness,
at times. A whiff of it now. My
eyes are mirrors that shine that fear
back at myself until I'm wrapped
in it. I decide the mattress would have
killed me if I'd hit it, going sixty
on the road out of this place.