This is the one where I fall in love with the iFIT trainer. 

I want a girlfriend face, 

a body like Madonna. Any Madonna. 

My iFIT trainer is the GOAT at getting laid. 

I want nails like stolen pearls. 

I want to climb him like Mount Everest

but we’re in the Lake District 

of a suburban ranch house in Essex County, MA.

Scaffel Pike will have to do. 

And you thought your ass was sore 

on Monday morning, Laura—

I throw my head back with a giggle,

pretend my tits are the Seven of Cups. 

He quotes Wordsworth. 

Says the world’s my oyster.

Says the key to success is commitment and endurance. 

Says “go get the butter” 

like Brando 

in Last Tango in Paris. 

O —I bend over backwards to please people. 

He says his marriage has been going south 

for a while, maybe since Covid, maybe since his father died, 

maybe since the second kid or when he threw rocks 

into the wind, maybe since the Harvest moon, 

maybe when the fish stopped running 

and Lehman crashed, maybe when he got bursitis 

and couldn’t walk to Cat Bells or Buttermere Lake, 

maybe when he started forgetting 

that other people are human, maybe it was before that, 

or after that, when the lollipop was licked and the party scrubbed, 

when horses stopped dancing and hell was blue. 

Shit sneaks up. 

Picks your pockets. 

Picks your soul. 

Maybe it was when the bird struck the window. 

But no, that wasn’t a bird. 

It was me

hitting the touchscreen

of a NordicTrack, in the Lake District 

of a suburban ranch house 

in Essex County, MA

step after step after step and getting nowhere.

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Damon Hubbs is the poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Magazine. He's the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Recent publications include The Gorko Gazette, Horror Sleaze Trash, Synchronized Chaos, Hobart, Revolution John, The Literary Underground, and others. His next book, Bullet Pudding, is forthcoming from Roadside Press in 2026. He lives in New England.