I KNOW WHAT KEEPS
ME UP AT NIGHT

my OCD has me counting the floor tiles at night.

I am not liking the flip-flap-flop of my slippers 

against the concrete, but what divine thing can I do

with the arrow of my tongue? something fills my bones 

with forceful music. I watch people paint the air 

with flowers and think of the unfamiliar hymn hidden in 

their fragile mouths. my heart aches, and I wear

my dissatisfaction with the world like a mushroom

wears its spongy hat. you think of tomorrow, I think of charmless

worries: a cushion just sitting an inch away from table.

the tired wallclock slowly paddling its oar into a white noise.

bread crumbs waiting for the lambent palm to sweep

them into a bin. detail. the detail I pay to everything.

everything ripples and ripples in half until I am lost in 

the frantic music. but don't we all have such unreasonable

fears? sometime ago, a boy punched me in the face 

because I couldn't help but knock down a bug nested 

on his cheek. there is nothing here that hasn't been 

touched by carefulness; there's this voice inside me that says

there is a place for people like me somewhere—in the pocket

of the sky. I touched my face, and nobody was there. 

I kicked and kicked against the shelves and everything,

but the voice, was spinning. the grasses sprouted blades.

the boxes developed high shoulders. a car leaped from the

low sky and dropped dead on my mother's cat. 

the windows lessening with each scream hurled at it.

my mother violently shaking the holster of my body, but 

not the voice in my head— and all I could whisper was:

the stove. my stove. I think I turned it on. I think I turned it on.

With a phrase from the poem, "Wednesday Poem" by Ernest Ogunyemi