Lavender
"Being in a funk" is what the cool people call it.
It's the purple that surrounds the scene at the lake.
Not sad enough to actually drown.
You say, 'Tm in a funk," and I think you think
you're too pretty, too well groomed,
too stylishly disheveled, to actually sulk.
Have you ever tried drinking a milkshake
with a girlfriend in a funk?
She just stares at the straw as if sucking on it
would allow the whole world into her mouth.
When a teenager wears baggy sweatpants
all February, her math teacher may ask her
if she's in a funk.
(She's actually just pissed off.)
Frogs don't get into funks, but toads do.
In the Bible, Abraham thought Sarah was in a funk,
but she was actually shaking with grief.
When her baby arrived, her 100-year-old flesh
quivered like a sliced papaya.
There is nothing funky
about being in a funk.
The Polish biochemist Casimir Funk
invented vitamins.
The golfer Fred Funk wore a pink skirt
to settle a bet with Annika Sörenstam.
Doing cartwheels or changing the bed sheets
are suggested cures for getting out of a funk.
To be in a funk is to want to cry,
but to be unable to access tears.
To be in a funk is to be unable to hear
the music in the subway's rattle.
If Virginia Woolf had been in a funk,
she would have filled her pockets
with dead lilacs instead of rocks.
Copyright Credit: Joanna Fuhrman, "Lavender" from To A New Era. Copyright © 2021 by Joanna Fuhrman. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press.
Source: To A New Era (Hanging Loose Press, 2021)