This is how I live now:

Wilted lettuce and second-hand shoes.

Photos of luxury through flea market frames;

Last year's fine china, ringed with watered-down booze.

Don't talk to me of "adulthood."

My throat gets thick when you do.

That life always looked rich on the check,

But indebted my heart - because it knew.

I slunk, backwards, out of the glitter,

Exhaled an entire life that could have been mine,

Watched it drift away from my future,

And I hummed into a blank page, "you're mine."

Unrealized dreams erased from time,

The house, the car, and the cruise to France,

They all fell away from my plans.

Making room for new life to stand a chance.

“Ph.D., English” will change my life,  

And the lives of those whose hearts flitter,

To imagine there's more to do with a life, 

More fuel from the lettuce than the glitter.