My OCD Knows I Am No Fool

Must touch the star-bordered cup on the hilt not the lip. Much touch the star-bordered cup on the hilt not the lip. Reach hand towards it but not quick enough now it’s bad. Can’t touch now or else death. Can’t touch now or else everything unravels and it’s whose fault? Yours. Passionately yours.

My therapist tells me writing down my compulsive thoughts traps them like mice.

Please don’t. That threshold is not yours to step on. It explodes like a star. Your feet don’t know how to walk. They will betray you and we will tell you when they do.

OCD; a suite of nice mice. They just want to check in; see how I’m sleeping; make sure I’m not.

You are checking the cupboard because you care. You are checking the cupboard because you care enough to realize something might be living there. And it is there to hurt. And it is there for us to tell you it hurts.

I have never caught mice, and I certainly don’t expect to.

Even when you do nothing. Especially when you do nothing.

They won’t waltz into a cage until you tell them there really is something good there.

Cheese? Therapy?

My therapist says to pretend all exhales are bad clouds leaving me.

But what if you breathe again?

I listen because I am not taken so easily.

Because you are no fool. You check things because everyone misses something.

Especially me.

Vasantha Sambamurti is a poet and prose writer pursuing an MFA at the University of Arkansas’ Program in Creative Writing and Translation. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Portland Review, the minnesota review, Cream City Review, The Citron Review, & elsewhere.