Peine Forte et Dure

I bought a bathroom scale today but I put it in my closet instead of the bathroom

I’m worried about trying to sneak it passed the troll living in the mirror

And as luck would have it, mirrors aren’t allowed in my bedroom

It wasn’t until I placed it that I realized I hadn’t bought the liquid courage I would need to actually step on the damned thing

But I can tell you that my DVD and video game collections weigh a combined 13.7 pounds

Approximately 30% of that is two different Futurama box sets that my Exe never initiated the contact needed to have me return them

It’s not my fault that the show got cancelled multiple times and everything fell apart

Well, actually, at least one of those things is my fault

The scale was not pleased with this distraction and simply said, “More weight”.

My CD collection weighs 19.3 pounds

At first that seemed strange cause I actually have more movies and games than CDs

But then I remembered that my music collection is 90% heavy fucking metal let’s go!

The scale didn’t appreciate my joke and repeated, “More weight”.

My board game collection weighs an astonishing 39.5 pounds

Is that astonishing? I actually never weighed a board game collection before today

Until I needed to kill some time to keep myself

The scale interrupted my train of thought, growling at me, “More weight”!

I gathered up the empty pizza boxes and the spent six packs on my coffee table

But when I placed them they didn’t trigger the minimum weight to turn the scale on

I take that as empirical proof that my addictions just aren’t massive enough to matter

If the scale knew I was mistaken, it kept it to itself and bellowed, “More weight”!

I collected every poem I had ever written and put it on a thumb drive

Thousands of words, all of them downers

Hundreds of heavy-handed Haiku

Lachrymose list poems

Psychotic sonnets

Soul-crushing concrete poetry composed of sullen stanzas and melancholic meter

Catalogues of pain, abuse, and mistreatment both external and self-inflicted

Decades of grief and trauma condensed to the size of a kit-kat like a dying neutron star

Am I not a writer of substance? Can’t you hear the floorboards strain under my gravitas?

Is this weighty enough for you now?!

The needle remained unmoved and the scale remained unimpressed

It looked up at me with a blank stare and matter-of-factly did it state:

“I refuse to measure everything weighing you down until you have the courage to step up”