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
Common Threads 