Chapbook day 7

Write a compulsion poem.  (Basically) (on plane trying to catch up... That's the gist of it).

Sequence

I remember very clearly thinking '17' and then opening and closing the refrigerator door seventeen times.

I remember very clearly thinking '212' and counting out two hundred and twelve turns on my bicycle and that's where I would get off my bike and look around, accepting destiny.

I remember that I got to 135, where that was, which was as nowhere as 212 would be - somewhere in the paved, suburban landscape of my childhood and I saw my life ahead of me, a string of enumerated, meaningless behaviors and decided right then to stop counting.

I would number nothing (though I knew there was a number to everything).
I would turn down this street and maybe another - and though the numbers of houses and the numbers of turns I'd taken at a moment were the same, I would not notice.
I would not attach significance.
I would not get married. 
I would not conform.

I would not count my way towards death or be a pattern's slave.