When I was younger, and my thoughts would snap, crackle, and pop, I’d keep them deep inside of me, hoping they would disappear.
I wasn’t ready to pull them out, so I repressed them out of love and respect—not for me, but for the others. I was in a vacuum of fear.

But after a while, I grew tired of protecting everyone but myself. I needed to eradicate the personal devaluation and the poisonous fright.
So now, instead of running from the snap, crackle, and pop, I sit down and write.

When a snap, crackle, and pop creeps into my brain, I have no choice but to write what it’s about.
I have to get that snap, crackle, and pop on paper before the next snap, crackle, and pop seeps out.

I realize in my twilight years that I can’t escape my thoughts. They snap, crackle, and pop when they want, and they don’t have to rhyme.
It could be a nightmare in the middle of a sleepless night or in the morning while I’m reading the New York Times.

The snap, crackle, and pop are annoyingly nonstop.
But now, instead of running from the truth, I run for my laptop.

The never-ending snap, crackle, and pop compel me to write, no matter the setting.
Hell, I was writing poetry in a bathroom stall at my own daughter’s wedding.

I could be sleeping, driving, walking, exercising, cooking, or cleaning.
Pretty much any time that snap, crackle, and pop leaks into my disordered psyche, my mind starts careening.

I have thousands of emails and texts I sent to myself, a jumble of words on tiny scraps of paper.
And endless lamentations written to a mom and dad, who I wish had never been my maker.

I have a gazillion notes on my phone and volumes of journals on my shelf.
And don’t judge me, but I even make ridiculously long phone calls to myself.

My mind doesn’t stop. With every snap, crackle, and pop, I’m like a robot trained to write it down.
I’m programmed to write. I compulsively spill and spell it out, just in time for another round.

I’m on a mission to block the snap, crackle, and pop, and yet I can’t help but remember,
what I fight every day to forget: the fire, the third-degree burns, and that devastating night in September.

I have no interest in turning every snap, crackle, and pop into a rhyme, a story, or a post.
But I’ve got no choice; otherwise, I feel like I’m nothing but a dried-up, burnt-out piece of milquetoast.