this is how it works

If you think about the game,
you've already lost.
That's the whole game.
You might approach someone,
perhaps at a party—
perhaps there is brandied eggnog,
or maybe it's a cooler full
of beer, juice boxes for the kids,
in celebration of the end
of soccer season, or a savior's birth,
or the strong possibility that soon
the days will get longer.
You would say, "You've lost the game,"
and it would be true
because now you've passed the torch
of consciousness
like a virus
to the person closest to you.

There's no winning the game.
It was invented by the British,
of course. Land of fog 
and consumptive moors,
land farmed to the bone. 
Maybe this resignation 
is what happens after you conquer
a continent or two,
leverage a famine to your advantage,
make the locals bring you tea.
And still it tastes bitter,
and still your wife finds you
a bit disgusting 
and your children grow up
and write books
about the terrible things you've done
leveraging that education you paid for
with the spoils of a rigged war.

Depression is a Russian nesting doll
forged in the thinnest winter sunlight:
Do you feel like you're dying 
because the test results aren't back,
or is the No new results page screaming at you
louder than usual (each time is the worst; this is how it works)
because you feel like you're dying?
Do you feel like you're dying
because of a life that failed to take shape,
a miscarriage of sorts, especially in the sense
that you folded in on yourself?
Do you feel like you're dying 
because you are, in fact?
You want the people you love
to win the game, but holding the secret
is swallowing a hundred of the tiniest dolls,
the ones shaped like pills.

And so you spit them out
and watch the splatter and wish
you could take it back. 
If there weren't so much love,
the game wouldn't be so bad; 
nothing would be, at all. 
It's been nine years since you learned
about the game, or six, or eighteen,
or forty-one, depending how you count.
Do you count?
Too much—leaves on trees, numbers on a screen.
Not enough, though maybe that's a relief,
being just one more flimsy leaf
red-gold on the driveway.
Time is on your side.
Time is not on your side.
Time is