Bitterness my Sweet

Do not mind me.
I’m just a bitter, unpublished “writer”
who once promised her grandmother a Booker.
Said I’d be the youngest.
Believed it.
Now I google: is 40 young?
They say 40 is the new 20s
but that’s not really the same, is it?
Up at four.
Write till seven.
Walk till nine.
Oats, no sugar. Tea, no milk.
Read the dead.
Read yourself.
Lunch. Nap. Think.
Play chess? Swim?
No yoga: too many people doing it.
Five to nine: write.
Boiled dinner.
Old music (classicer the better). New 
music (keeping up with the times).
Be in bed by ten.
Rinse. Repeat.
I want to be that author.
Instead I’m a bitter “writer”
with Google Drive notifications,
folders of rejections,
and reels instead of dreams.
Delete the Gram?
Eventually.
Wake at the sixth snooze:5:30.
Remind myself: weekday.
Remind myself: school run,
packed lunches,
commute.
Convince myself I love my job.
Like it.
Don’t hate it.
Serve capitalism in lipstick and flats
for the only green tick
on a red-ink month.
I write in Notes app
at red lights,
in the margins of meetings,
on buses when the car asserts its inertia,
in the quiet scream of too much.
Siphon it.
blue-black, brown-inked
onto yellow books
and gifted diaries
stacked like broken teeth
on my desk.
On my drafts.
In my bones.
Until I have “Author”
next to my name,
I swear it: 
I will never sleep
before ten.
(But I do.
At one.
Sometimes two.)