I keep my joy in a tiny cardboard jewelry box on my dresser, where I know I can always find it. I have squished it down to make it fit. With time, it has taken on the shape of its container, its once-malleable golden consistency now settled into a stocky, tarnished block. I do not care what my joy looks like, so long as it fits in the palm of my hand. Big emotions are a threat to my carefully curated environment, where there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

I keep my tears condensed in a can, teasing them with the prospect of release as they sit on the shelves of my eyelids, quivering with excitement. They do not know that this is where they are destined to remain. The race will never begin; they will not get the chance to run wildly down the tracks of my cheeks. I am too calculated, too careful with my appearance to allow lawless drops of water to paint my face in whatever abstract patterns they please. This is my face, not theirs. I call the shots.

Anticipation is a distant memory, the sound of my mother’s navy blue felt-tip pen etching her elegant, swoopy signature onto my field trip permission slip, signaling the promise of adventures sure to come. The slick leather of the cracked bus seat warming under my little hands; the juiciness squeezed into an afternoon at the children’s museum, running until my shoelaces untied themselves, and blowing bubbles through a gigantic plastic wand.

Of course, once I got older, I learned that there is a direct correlation between things that are ripe and things that are messy. And so I freeze-dried my anticipation into paper-thin orange slices and strung them together to make a garland for my room. I sit on my bed during these sticky summer afternoons and watch the ceiling fan spin, circulating the air and making my flat pieces of fruit perform their careful little dance, wafting mechanically up and down, up and down.

My house is a sanctuary for predictability; my windows are lined with shiny plastic plants, so that I do not have to worry about anything dying here. All of my identical tank tops hang in a row in my closet, like soldiers in uniform, ready and waiting to accompany a pair of vintage Levi’s into battle. The war between stains and fabric rages on, clumsiness often emerging victorious over perfection, with coffee or blood emblazoned across the front of a white blouse. I swap my shirt out for its duplicate, whichever is next in line, and I imagine that I am God, moving the pieces of the earth around to accommodate my vision.

I can handle this tiny corner of creation.

I know my limits, and I know the exact number of identical shirts it takes to appear stainless.