I stare at the shelves cluttered with
fifteen years of dusty, useless memories
that make me think too much again
of when I was small and didn't see
so many layers and colors and complexities
inside everything and everyone, layers
of yogurt and summer nights and screaming
inside my head because my mouth is full
of everything I'll never, ever say
and the shelves stare back with a silent
sort of anger, as if daring me to rip everything
off of them and dump it all on the floor
then build careful piles, big to small, big to small
as I always do when the feeling of something terrible tells me
to line things up, short to tall, short to tall
and make more lines and shapes and piles and still
more lines and carefully constructed mental traps
because a Terrible Thing will happen if I don't so
I will need to make more lines and shapes and piles until
the Random Terrible Thing will stop rushing towards me
and I can finally stop making lines and shapes and piles.