Bound

There is an old, white binder in the top of the office closet. 

That inconspicuous place where belongings go to die - to be summoned by the goodwill box during the great spring clean. 

It lives there, sequestered, breathing the dust of estrangement. 

It is the cheap, $2.99, Walmart trapper keeper. 

The kind you decorated in middle school. 

Magazine parts and gel pens aimed at making the mundane more interesting - but this one is blank. 

Binders help you keep your life together. 

They bind together everything important, everything impactful. 

This binder - did just that. 

It bound everything she ran from. 

It became a ledger of the allocations against perfection. 

The sum of its parts - poetic lines of free therapy. 

I - am that white binder that waits in the closet. 

My life - is the collection of poems it contains. 

Scribbled words written on college-ruled paper with blue, fading lines. 

Restrained, abandoned, isolated, concealed - not to be seen. 

It’s fragile, plastic, mediocre parts - old and worn. 

But not vintage enough to be shelf fodder for those that feast their eyes on the poised vignette of the midcentury bookshelf. 

The museum home of a woman that dodges reality like a narcissistic mother. 

She calls to me. 

On the occasional solemn night when I want to really feel - and feel real. 

Will I open and browse her? Will I thumb through and arouse her? 

Will I set her on the display shelf for others to see? 

She begs to be free.