My desk

is a mess right now.

There are pill bottles to the left of me-my hands almost topple them every time I reach for a drink from my mug.  Three of them sit there-mixed herbs, vitamins, aspirins, ibuprofens, all left over from a trip.

 Behind them, my mail.  Envelopes on envelopes, set at every which angle, are trying to escape from a letter stand that's doing it's best to contain all the credit card offers, bills, and opened Christmas greetings.  Every time I pull a page from them, they all move, jostling the bottles, shifting things every which way.  They're hustlers, really.  Just a bunch of rowdy thugs that want my attention, or are yelling to "pay now or else," or are trying to sell me something that I really don't need.  I'm tired of it all.

 Not too far from them sit the doodads and knicknacks.  The useful waste.  An old, unused keychain souvenier that someone brought back from Europe.  A scuffed, kinked-up cable that connected something with something at one time-it used to be white.  A set of miniature screwdrivers, some used a few times, some untouched, rubber banded together and bundled in an old film cannister. A half-eaten box of Sour Patch Kids, a little dried, and a bit less appealing then they were a week ago, trapped underneath all the rest.  A pen and a marker, snuggled against each other, holding out next to the chaos, wondering when there will be some peace and order again.  A plastic bag, wrinkled, used once, and forgotten-it knows it can still hold.  Scissors, brand-new, sit there with the rest of the merch, shiny, spotless.  They know they're better than the rest, they just got here, they won't end up like everybody else.

 They're all vagabonds, moved from place to place so many times that they have no real place of their own. Everything that they are is seemingly insignificant, but did so much, and just might do more in the future, if I give them the chance.

 If they don't end up moved to another dark corner.

The books and notes stand sentient and massive at the far end of the desk.   Collected knowledge from everywhere, around the world, is compiled between bindings, slowly gathering dust like a regal wig.  They rarely move.  They have their place.  They are permanent, only to be destroyed by fire or water.  They are even, orderly, with numbered pages, indexes, square-cut corners and perfectly stitched bindings.  Their white paper glimmers in the softest light, blazes and reflects everything when open in the sun.   Their intelligence stays, their value, timeless.

 Above them, a few sticks of incense waver at the scene.  Slight breezes or touches can move them about in their jar of pebbles.  Each is tall, each is even, and each has an aroma that's so pleasing, so beautiful.  They want to keep this gift to themselves.  The only way to release it is to destroy them by fire.  So far, they've survived.  As time goes by, they lose their scented beauty.  They become sticks like all the rest as the oils dry up.  There's no reason to keep them out anymore.  They keep fidgeting.

 At the edge sits a camera, turned away, turned off.  It doesn't see the bedlam behind it, it doesn't feel the bills struggling to escape and explode onto the floor, it doesn't smell the sweet perfume fading from the incense inches away.  It doesn't think about how the silent books can store so much thought and not speak a word.  It doesn't bother trying to untangle the cables from scissors, screwdrivers from the rubber bands.

It stares at the the plain white wall.