And I’d make myself sick if I was another person watching my thoughts. It’s a blurry and slow-moving
compilation of coincidences stacked on top of eachother: sticky teacups stacked on a desk, junk mail
stacked on a table, clothes stacked on an unfortunate dresser, dirty plates stacked in a sink...

The thing about my hoards is that every piece of clutter could have my heart in it, and it would be better
for my heart to be lost in the pile than trashed. In reality, I can’t see where it is until another piece of it is
gone, and I divide myself smaller yet.

So everything becomes a mess sooner or later. The difference between clean homes and messy ones is the
habit of the owner. What makes a mess and what makes clean, though, is up to the owner’s opinion. But
by all my definitions, this house of mine is a clutterfunk.

I hung up a picture the other day of me burying my face into her back shoulder. If we’re speaking
metaphorically, I hung it up in my closet, behind all the clothes and the view of the public. I had my arms
around her waist, I could smell her hair (just plain conditioner-scented), and maybe she had her hands
settled around mine. No eyes, I don’t like to look people right in the eyes. But I looked at it, and that same
old longing trotted up to me and asked again to be fed.

It has not been fed in a while. It feeds off table scraps, from momentary memories that I don’t keep the
images of, and only the essence. By the time I realize it’s been fed and filled, it will be gone and I will
have forgotten it was ever there.

This house has been still, lately. Sometimes it rains. I haven’t seen the sunlight come in through the
windows in a while. It’s terrible that that was my favorite part. Living here feels like a chore more than a
blessing. All these years of biology built up just to realize there isn’t a point to it– and that I just have to
come up with things myself. If I start to favor throwing in the towel, I hope that I’ll be asleep when it
happens.

I go through my memories like faded magazine pages, because all the new ones I buy get lost somewhere:
under the bed, on top of some furniture, under a stack of other magazines, or thrown away by accident.
Though, I actually lied about that, because I’ve been leaving all those old memories strewn about the
same places. I’m in some literary limbo and have lost my senses.

I wish that this all would change. I consider myself a homebody in the sense that I can’t stand this old
house but can’t stand leaving it. I just want my eyes to see again. But misery keeps standing in the
doorways like a child, and I’m nursing an anger that won’t stop crying until it wears itself out.

Someone told me to start pulling apart all those stacks that sit around the house, and put them in their
right places, but starting that is so much more than I...