This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UPR chapter.

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

Into crumbs and pieces

All around me

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.

Poetic Monday: Spring Cleaning