Trash can, wastebasket;
the place we throw it all away.
Used tissues--soggy mascara, dried semen,
or the babies that would never be,
and the heaps of food waste, human waste.
Wasted human.
Why do we take ourselves and the people we used to love,
toss people and our person deep within a hole of shame,
darkness, misery, guilt, worry, frustration, fear?
If someone only said to you, or to me, when we dig deep
into the ground and find the place no one will find us
or them, the people we are burying--
if they only said,
"You are not trash."
Our emotions refuse to become refuse, the remains of
being unwanted, as we perceive ourselves to be.
But we is just me, and even though I can't hear the voice
I long to hear above my own, the sounds reverberate in my chest,
next to my heart, where I heard them last.
The last time we spoke your fingers did not reach for mine.
Your jeans did not rip in the same one spot.
The dog that I picked that you picked after you went back,
his tail wagging all the way on the ride back to his new home,
did not kiss my face and my eyes and ears like he loves to do.
Even though you didn't still love me, you did before,
now thrown hastily, yet decidedly in the trash can outside your door.
I dropped off the last remnant of your physical being,
an old rabbit-eared antennae.
I didn't, couldn't look in your trash can,
or stand in the driveway longer than was needed to drop and run
the hell away from crumbling gravel, a window newly aluminum foiled, and the motorcycle kept under surveillance at all times.
I hope he looked on his camera screen and saw walking,
talking, feeling, breathing human trash gliding
down the sidewalk, feet pattering into a jog.
The grass licked my feet and tangled in my toes on the way
to the one place my sighs could sink lower than my feet,
deep into the warm upholstery of my car seat, the grandma car,
the dented, imperfect, but mostly reliable car
away, far away, to a place where someone would look curiously,
pick up the trash, my trash, me, and say,
"It's beautiful."