Dark and Dingy Room

It was dark and dingy with a single lightbulb lighting the room

There were stacks and stacks of unopened boxes

There were filing cabinets filled to the brim

People worked nonstop opening boxes

One was filled with photos of the past

It has photos of soccer when I was 5

Pictures of my sister and I playing in the rare texas snow

Snapshots of my time with my grandpa, including my favorite that I lovingly named “the plate”

Another box has artifacts, trophies, books, awards, posters

It reminds me of my childhood

Of winning soccer games 

Of reading novels way above my grade level

Of doing good in school

Of what I liked and what I didn’t

There’s a third box being opened

It holds research papers, binders, notebooks

All the school supplies

Someone pulled out a research paper titled “The True Time and Effort”

It truly did take time and effort to write

A filing cabinet drawer flies open with a touch

It holds an abundance of colors, what I associate with emotions and other things

Red for anger, yellow for joy, gray for boredom

There were some colors I hadn’t even discovered yet

Someone starts opening a drawer filled with songs, ones I wrote, ones I didn’t

One of the papers flies over and lands in front of me

It has on the top in big bold letters, “I’m a dandelion”

One of mine, my favorite actually, it helped me through a rough time

I start humming the tune, and someone starts singing something different

It’s starting to become chaos

Things start to become disorganized

People start to wander from their posts

I sigh as this happens daily

I start to focus

Focus on things that matter

Focus on tomorrow

Focusing brings order back to the confusion

It helps me remember my hopes and dreams

So I focus

People return to their posts

I place things back where they belong

It’s organized chaos truly

Someplace no one will understand but me

It was dark and dingy with a single lightbulb lighting up my brain