Last night, I met somebody brave enough to say that they are so OCD
over having clean countertops. So today, I will make myself a mess
over four slices of toast, thinking maybe it will fix me.
Two tuna sandwiches are 700 calories and a healing process.
Being scared of mercury poisoning is a stigmatized trait that I can ignore.
Being scared of popping toasters starting fires is a stigmatized trait that I must
have obsessive carb disorder!! I’m reaching for the light mayo, wishing my illness a way
of being so scrumptious, that I could turn it into a fridge magnet:
scratch and sniffs on my DSM-5, and I won't wipe the crumbs off the countertop this time,
because I'm not that kind of kind, and I'm not that kind of meal prepper.
Even so, a lazy incantation, half-memorized, slips out through my subconscious
to stop a surefire horde of kitchen ants.
Eternally at the mercy of everything, but I'm too tired to use my hands:
too scared to think to ever act.
Cut from the cloth of cutting my teeth on the low-hanging
sword of Damocles. Scared of a relapse, and exposure therapy.
One is in my head, and the other is in the bread
crumbs. I spend the rest of my sandwiches, agonizing,
who is winning what war?
Will it ever be me?
Steven C. Wright (he/him) is a queer poet and prose author from Edison, New Jersey. His work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, londemere lit, and BRAWL.