This weekend I began spring cleaning, not because I am virtuous or organized or suddenly one of those people who labels their spices.

No. I started cleaning because my brain was full.

Overfull. Like a Manhattan closet. Like my inbox. Like my emotional support tote bag that contains three lip balms, a charger that fits nothing I own, and a granola bar from the Obama administration.

I needed to declutter.
My space. My brain. My life. Possibly my soul.

So I began pulling things out of drawers, boxes, corners, and those mysterious “I’ll deal with this later” piles that reproduce at night when no one is watching.

And as always happens when you clean with your feelings instead of a plan, I found artifacts.

Old cards. Photos. Notes from another version of me who believed in things like matching socks and having a five-year plan. Mementos that made me pause and wonder about a lot of life questions.

Is it time to let this go? Or am I just afraid that letting it go means admitting time actually passed?

Spring cleaning is less about dust and more about archaeology.

But then.

Then I discovered the real crisis.

I could not find my zebra head.

Now, before you call anyone, I should explain.  I collect quirky art. Not aggressively. Not hoarder-adjacent. Just selectively whimsical. I own this fabulous cultural piece by a Mexican artist who makes fanciful animals on long sculptural stalks.

One of them is, or was,  a zebra.

At least I think it’s a zebra.

For years I thought it was a giraffe, which is objectively incorrect because giraffes and zebras share approximately zero design elements beyond “existing in Africa.” But still. The heart wants what the brain mislabels.

Anyway.

I found the stalks.

Carefully bubble-wrapped. Protected. Preserved. Waiting.

But the head?

Gone.

Vanished.

Somewhere between moves, moods, and moments, I appear to have misplaced the literal head of my zebra.

Which feels metaphorical in ways I am not emotionally prepared to unpack.

So now my spring cleaning has become a spring search.

Where is the zebra head?
Where is my mind?
I keep hearing Where Is My Mind?by Pixies playing faintly in the background of my life while I open yet another box labeled miscellaneous but important.

Because that’s the real joke of adulthood, isn’t it?

We think we’re organizing our homes, but really we’re trying to locate the missing pieces of ourselves.

Sometimes it’s a photo.
Sometimes it’s a letter.
Sometimes it’s the part of you that believed life would feel more settled by now.

And sometimes it’s a zebra head.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be digging through one more closet, humming 90s alt-rock, and wondering whether the universe is trying to tell me something profound.

Or whether I just need better labeling systems.

Spring cleaning. Yes, come for the decluttering, stay for the existential wildlife mystery.