Little Essay on Disorder

The bottom drawer holding sweaters and 
scarves: you can't make it stick, except 
with a wad of cardboard. The refrigerator 
leans slightly to the right, resting against 
a wooden block you inserted between its shoulder 
and the wall. The jagged line across the counter 
panels, invisible until you look under the top: 
like the view of a crooked gap in the teeth 
of someone when they finally smile with their 
whole mouth. There's so much inventory you 
can list of the mismatched, the propped-
up, the almost falling down. Your dream,
when you dreamed of a house, was of floors
that flowed smooth as the afternoon light
falling on them through windows. Rooms
you could almost hear breathing, before
the years filled them with clothes and 
furniture, small appliances that chimed  
or sang the start of the day or the end  
of a washing cycle. You want to apologize
to keys and quilts, bottles of cleaner 
under the sink, the orange in the fruit
bowl and the banana that turned mushy— 
at least explain how all you wanted was 
an orderly life, the magic of simplicity
and alignment. But they remind you again
that this is what it is. And if you are
tender to yourself, you'll hear and 
maybe even smell the rain falling on 
asphalt, unroll the waxed and wrinkled 
map of this life which shows you there 
are still wildnesses left unexplored.