OCD

There isn’t always a cause.

It may be a product of her always planning mind;

Always on the go,

Always impatient,

Always demanding.

Because she must make up for lost time.

The loss no one can predict.

The time when:

In a split second which color shirt to wear

                It descends.

In a pause to answer a text

                She is gone.

For a second,

For two hours.

Vacant.

 

The world fades away

Except for a sliver of reality that becomes a life goal:

Picking a nail,

Scratching finish off a chair,

Peeling paint off a wall,

Plucking eyelashes,

Digging for dandruff,

Chomping flesh off the lip,

Pounding a stone against another,

Digging in the dirt with a stick,

Searching for specks of dirt in the carpet,

Pulling weeds.

It varies with the year.

Even playtime ended early,

As she became fixated with rubbing her fingers over slippery Polly clothes.

 

A lifetime’s worth of memories

Snatched, marred, blackened.

When never-ending family feuds prove too onerous

She may even welcome the inviting oblivion.

 

For there is no fighting in the realm of OCD.

There is no pain in the realm of OCD.

There are no sensations in the realm of OCD.

 

Something immense must snap her out:

Half the skin scraped off her little finger once did the trick,

For she continued smashing the rocks

Even as she collected blood and bruises.

 

And she has never escaped.

She can only break one habit

By plunging herself into another.

And even still,

The rocks call to her hands;

A glance in the mirror may prove disastrous if she spots a speck of dandruff.

 

So when a girl snaps at you for asking her about her hours of disappearance;

Avoids answering why she ignores texts.

When you catch her in the act,

Though she spent days calculating a spot that no window or door could see.

When she complains of the sore muscles she earns from bending over to do the same task day after day.

When even a homework assignment requires so much “time”,

She does not eat or drink.

When she cannot explain why flossing regularly is a terrible idea,

When she wears a hat in front of mirrors,

When she will not remove her hands from her pockets,

When a dirty comer of her room becomes her home,

Give her a hug from me.

Maybe our arms can fend off the hand pulling her into the shadow

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