You like me to tell you
about your obsessions
when you were little.
How you played with trains,
how you drew only the wicked queen,
how if you were very good,
we let you watch YouTube videos
of garbage trucks.
Did they evaporate with time?
Or are they stacked underneath
your new fascinations
like fossils,
like a foundation?
They were so persistent
for so long, each one occupying
your entire world.
Finally, we look it up
and learn that they are stored
in the hippocampus,
a spot in your brain
you decide has the most perfect name.
A person’s history of old obsessions
could clearly only be contained
on the grounds of an entire institution
in the brain so massive it was named
for a hippopotamus,
that big blunt barrel
of a beast.