parentheses

i stare at A Guide to Course Registration 

half-bitten nails dig into the

skin above my elbow

the living room couch is barely 

visible under the

scattered rainbow highlighters—half-capped

half-crumpled sheets of class schedules, 

course catalogs, syllabi

and piles of creased, bullet

point sticky notes covered 

in scattered attempts at planning

(the next four years of)

my life.