He spent hours reorganizing his stacks

by day of the week, morning or evening,

alphabetized frontpage headlines. Some

days, when he had an exciting reshuffling

planned like sorting by number of obituaries,

his fingers would itch for the thin paper

until the irritation forced him to fake sick

and duck out of the office after lunch.

He loved the rustling pages, the soft slap

as he dropped one edition onto another,

soothing as the first drop of salve sinking

into tender skin. Late at night he’d pace

the maze between the piled walls, his eyes

closed, humming himself into a shuffling

sleep with dreams of children chanting

the Fibonacci sequence like a prayer.

One night dozing in front of a stack

reorganized by number of typos, he was

awakened by the smack of paper against

hardwood floor, quickly followed by a shower

of papers thumping his body. Struggling

against the weight of disorder, he took

his last breath calculating the time

it would take to rearrange the fallen stacks.