I imagine my grandfather, the one
with a hoarding problem,
is in charge of which memories I keep.
On brand with his trademark
uncharming scowl,
he clutches onto the sentence
“You and the Little Mermaid can go
fuck yourselves.” No connection,
no context, no reasoning just
a line from a podcast I listened to in
eighth grade – Grandpa, let it go.

I need to clean this place out –
the glistening collection
of moments my brain once found relevant,
now degrading as fast as plastic, polluting
my mind’s eye.

What is it about these thoughts?
and “how many wonders
can one cavern hold?”
and who keeps pressing replay?

Sometimes I dive too deep
into a memory trying to
memorize every square inch,
underneath its cellophane
surface. Feel its fresh gloss,
hold it up to the light,
fingerprints suspended on its clear coat.

Recycle through memories
reduce me to tears. Sprawled out,
reused eyes fixed vacantly
at my droopy ceiling.

My soul and my body
(cartesian dualistic) dissociating
under my ceiling, started

to cry in September, the
tears are soapy, not salty
like mine and the ceiling
gets sad – more than me. I
don’t hear.
I see through the plastic lens. I
don’t see.

If the tears never stopped
my room could fill and I
wouldn’t notice until it
reached my throat.

Instead,
seeping into my
college carpet
I balance a
garbage can
on a chair
but it never
catches
all the tears.

What was I thinking about?

I build downwards,
into the ground
a massive hole, and crawl in