Spring Cleaning
by: Agnes A. Sastre Rivera
It starts slow at first
First I leave a cup on the table
And never take it downstairs to clean the filthy crust that clutters around the edges
I leave a few shirts tossed around the room
Too tired to pile them up like usually do
Then I start to misplace my keys
Forget my headphones
Fill my notebook’s edges with poems that are never relevant
Classes go by a blur
I really can’t find an excuse to why my tongue hasn’t molded to the words of the foreign language everyone else speaks
Then the sight of my untamed room bothers me
I hate the walls that keep falling
Falling
Falling
Into crumbs and pieces
All around me
Falling
Falling
Breaking down
Finding a way to keep me locked in
And stop me from falling falling
down the same road that fell into my way
Without noticing I began to stray away
Form all the plans
And the unwelcome comments
I stop looking in the mirror
Stop caring how I stopped falling into place
And just awkwardly managed to fit in small holes that had a familiar sound of my past description
I wish there were a way to cut out the awkward edges that stuck out all around myself
Find a way to cut the excess
The terrible bizarre things that made me stand out in the crowd of people who know the same tongue
I wish I could learn to speak in tongues
I wish I found a way to make my otherness less other
And find comfort in a skin
Find comfort in something that won’t try to hurt me
Reprogram my systems
Make myself less counterproductive
And maybe have the courage to clean my room in the morning.