Grief takes over everything in Jason Ridpath's "Routine Broke." The opening line, "Not brushed my teeth since your death," shows how the loss has wrecked even the smallest daily habits, and the title echoes that. The speaker seems to have lost a partner, missed the funeral, and been cut off from the dead person's family. Judging by the lines about hoping they "hate me," guilt and shame are tangled up with the sorrow.
The feelings swing hard. There is numbness, then anger ("Fill me with hate so I can burn down this place"), then reckless self-harm with pills and vodka, all in search of a little sleep. Even sleep offers no relief, because dreams of the loved one only underline the absence. The short, blunt lines feel raw and unpolished, like thoughts spilling out unedited. The mood is bleak, exhausted and desperate, ending on the speaker's bewildered question: why did nobody prepare them for this?