The Phrenologist

I wish there was a splotch

the size of skipping stone

above my ear lobe for my phrenologist

take out and put in a mason jar

like blueberry sauce my

mother used to boil in early August.

Always too runny– dripped from toast

on the counter top to become

sticky like scabs for mandibles of the

ants that came when it was

disquietingly damp.

He would likely find me to be abnormal.

He would say I was a jigsaw puzzle

of senseless guilt

 and hungry arm veins.

He would say that I think too much

about clouds and windowsill.

He would see that I was a torrent

between hope

the sublime, and the tiny corner

that a banished all sense of

self worth.

I wish he take his scalpel and cut out my OCD —

make the sticky spiral pacing always

under my fingers nails

on the counter

in the jaws of the ant colony

still dormant under

the kitchen sink.