i cleaned my room
364 days later
just in time
to make it dirty again
i put the squares in stacks
never-ending towers
tossed the receipts
[monetary memories]
i tucked my sheets in
swept the floors
noticed the walls were blank
accumulated dust
somehow the getting-rid-of
always takes-more-in
and the lone dresser
which we had such high hopes for
is getting bogged down by weight
a dresser’s worth of homeless clothes
adopted children waiting
for their name to be called
i’ve made do with the bland
faux wooden floors where the bugs sneak through
a window leading to nowhere
but an alley where the garbage grows
before i fall asleep
my eyes look to the sky
a foreign ceiling of mixed messages
that i’ve still yet to decipher
among them:
those five questions that
my teacher used to ask
one, more than anything—
“why?”
i take for granted
that my heart still beats
that my soul still skips
running for something
running, running, running
from nothing