checking in from outside of life

 
i want to crumple up the door
and the lone window
and burn them to dust.

i exist in a white box.
it's eight by eight by eight
and the cracks don't let anything in or out.
they're just there to remind me
that nothing stacks neatly.

i reconstruct the door
to take a piss. the hallway blinds me.
i wish it would dim to considerate shadows.
i stumble back. the door is again
an irregularity.

my books lay unopened.
i can't face my heroes.

careless apprentice painters
left rough white stubble.
the walls of my box
don't care enough to shave.
i match the walls. i am a fixture.

the obese squirrels outside
fight over some scrap.
they can't even fit atop my windowsill.
one falls off, scrambles back up, they tussle more.
below them is a full dumpster.

there are seven to-dos
eighteen meeting agendas
and sixty-three reminders
demanding my compliance.
they don't stack neatly either.

i once saw a squirrel
hanging charred from a power line by its teeth.
i imagine the fat fucking rodents outside
screaming, paralyzed by ten thousand volts
burning bodily hydrocarbons like dirty gasoline.

my eye traces tracks
around the six square inches of stubble
in front of me. the grains whisper soothing
guarantees of safety, isolation, permanence.

i am dirty gasoline.
i run rich sometimes. the stench hangs heavy.
they laugh at me burning away.

the hallway erupts with a crashing door.
the phantom footsteps that share my apartment
are invading again. i shrink from the noise
as if the footsteps would tear down the wall
and show me to the world as i cower in the corner
tracing stubble. safety isolation permanence.

i am an unsightly nondescript lump
left by careless apprentice painters.

the toilet flushes. the footsteps recede,
the sadistic jack-in-the-box
plotting its next ambush.
safety isolation permanence.

my soft homely sheets claw at me.
the stubbly wall feels cool and smooth
against my forehead.

i am cracked.
nothing stacks neatly.