Balls of Paper

There are dozens of crumpled up little
Balls of paper at the bottom of my pockets

I never learned how to organize my thoughts
So I stab them onto whatever scraps are nearby

There's purple notebook pieces
With blue lines,
And some basic yellow
Post-It notes,
And a few paycheck stubs
And backs of receipts

They almost all include
Correct spelling,
Punctuation and
Capitalization, too

Even at my most disjointed,
I crave a little order,
To make sense of it all

Even the dust on the bookshelves
In my room at home
Is organized in neat little rows

A few ideas, though, aren't perfect
Because sometimes things can make me
So... anything:
Angry, sad, or happy,

That I cannot remember
How to write in English

When I re-read it all, I find:
A few phrases in
My useless, halting Hungarian,
A word or two in French or Japanese,
And even a few forgotten letters,
Like the E in "beautiful"

Because sometimes
When I am so... anything:
Angry, sad, or happy,
I can't remember who I am