I started packing things away,
for safekeeping
out of sight, out of mind, they say
you know this story all too well.
They were balanced there before then,
precariously at best, but tucked in
to the corners and the valleys
of my head
with space between
for something right
to grow.
And the boxes took up room and the more things stumbled in,
the memories, anxieties, the captured bits of fear that wandered in
on drunken legs and made themselves
at home, the more I
packed away until
the only things
that I had left
were containers
nothing else.
Popular wisdom tells me now that I should find a space and meditate,
self-medicate, deliberate and contemplate the reasons
why
I needed them, the cardboard crates,
the warped attempts to regulate
the artifacts inside my head
that wished me dead
Find a mountain, or a spa, or a therapist to help me
unpack all these things
— all the things!
That suffocated every part of my reality
in the boxes
where I kept them and they tell me I should lay them out,
examine them
necropsies on the damage that I hoarded till it owned me
poke and prod the innards
for some clues
to my demise
And them bury them, perhaps
with some full-moon ceremony, write them down and burn them
or toss them in the sea, but I think
I need the space they occupy
to be vacant now, rather than later and I think
I’m sick of seeing them, and I think
I don’t give a shit
what unpacking them might do, what I might find I accidentally
stuck in there in my haste, and I think
it’s time to simply
strike a match
and watch them burn.
