What to Leave Behind
       

What drove you there in the first place. That garden that wouldn't grow, roots
that wouldn't take. The missing pieces and the objects with pieces missing;
the cords that charge we-don't-know-what. Small machines you never knew
how to work, gifts you welcomed but had no place for. Anything broken—
cracked mug seeping coffee onto countertops, circling absence.
Who cares if your name is on it, if you bought it vacationing somewhere
not here. The streets you knew the names of but never drove: Sherwood, Alto, Third
The job you couldn't land, the friendship dissolved, the table not welcomed round
What we could've done with the place: those French doors we never put in,
yard we never leveled. What we could've done with the city, our lives, ourselves.
We've kept that like a live thing. Bury it. Let clover spread its three and lucky four
winged green across the blank-check in the dirt, which, like all else on this good earth.
was never truly ours to begin with.

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Copyright © 2016 Renee Emerson All rights reserved
from Threshing Floor
Jacar Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission