Category: Experience

getting a grip on

her future starts with

burning the Christmas tree

boxes one decade now in

her attic

buying enough hummingbird

nectar to last through October

and watering the string of pearls

cascading from the porch table

getting a grip is festooned with

saying goodbyes to too much

long held hostage from living

new lives in better spaces

like all those music boxes

of childhood and sad, stained

table linens frayed with holes ~

gaps in the timelines of

lineage like broken branches

on that cross-stitched tree

of names and thread strands

of who goes where and how

pre-affair, divorce, remarriage,

cousins once-removed now

fully removed and never coming

back because they did the

same thing with their goodbyes ~

they burned the Christmas tree

boxes and all that’s left is

the cooling ash of

what once was

before their birds

left the nest for the skies