Recycling Bin

by Rin Marie Wilson

I often sit still in wonderings, a breadth between my ghost and the next. I nurture the worn hand-me-downs, speak sweet formalities: utterances of past fruition. I don't even know what caverns in me yearn, just that they do. I hear the echoes of them, trembling in the bones of my foremothers.

Have our teeth always been so sharp?

I want to unfold myself into the earth and live my life open garden: generously. Instead, I'll love on reflex. I often wonder how many more avenues I'll walk through—where my shoes getting caught on asphalt is mistaken for anxiety. Averting my eyes from broken-backed women becomes familiar: suckling at their hurt. I'm nursing others, in a bid to forget myself. Nails bitten back, she seeds fear. She holds herself at arm's length. Says something in me is burned badly

and I'm covered in ashes. She whispers how my lips used to love loudly, now they laugh with certainty. Not every battle is meant for losing, but maybe I've broken enough bodies. Or maybe enough bread has been broken for me.

I see you in the familiarity. How many times can you say I love you, without losing the meaning? I loved you without reserve, with all of me. I picture you in the long road home and hikes and waterfalls. Every time I follow the road, I lose sight of its details, of its marvel and beauty. And I wonder at why I travel along it.

I think you've loved me with convenience and discovery. Learning how to unfold myself before you—so willing. And you devoured me. I'm letting myself sit in that anger, to heal in it. There's only so many times you can go to warm yourself in embers.

I make my way, in the same way I used to. The one that used to bring me to you. And look, there's a new park. The drive feels smooth. I see this place and I remember that at one time, surely, I was here. I could remember the sound of each tire's skid

marks like clockwork. But the city never knew me in the way I knew it.

And I almost take the turn, back up your familiar road home.

I almost laugh at the familiarity. My lids half asleep and I can still feel your skin, phantom-like.

It's been three years, and I'm still processing your grief. There's only so many times you can lock lips as a promise, holding tight to whispers we've long lost.

I wish you would've had the drive that I only now find desirable. I was always swollen knuckles, born blood lineage of fighters. There's something so vulnerable in being asked to be loved.

And how pitiful.

Your friends had once told me they never expected you to be held in—claws dug deep—for long. And here you had me, years in the trough of you, and you'd been wishing you could escape it all. Even yourself.

Sometimes I remember someone shouldn't have to change and grovel so much for nothing. It was so good for so long, and then what. And for what. God happens for a reason, life holds you fast. Our wills want to happen faster.

But what I wouldn't give to be the one to burn you down. Watch you flake into ash. I'll watch you as you writhe.

The version of you that I was shown will

live in me forever, and once my cells have outgrown themselves thrice, I'll still have your stupid fucking scent on my skin. No amount of scrubbing myself raw will help me to forget the smell of your alcohol-stained breath trying to find warmth and comfort in me. Limoncello might not have been your undoing, but it was the last of my skein.

I think of you and your soft skin and I regret the parts of me that I threw away to forget

you.

You made me write poetry about God and pretty flowers. Redirect my skin to pen and paper. Loving you is an extension of loving myself, and I can feel myself coming home. Somewhere in the depth of this, I can feel myself holding you. At arm's length. And against my collarbone. Your heartbeat feels so familiar. Look me in the eyes when you say you love me so I can feel it down in my toes, again. Show me where you trace your hands, where your spirit bumps into mine and we seek into God's. Show me where and how you love yourself. Do you paint yourself into pretty pictures or rewrite your narrative? Do you think about the purpose of parables and wonder how close you've come to death? Tell me, do you feel His spirit pour into you? I want to know how Jesus learned to bear the weight of us, and experience the love that takes. And I want to extend that so far into and beyond myself it makes me weep. And I want, quite dearly and utterly, you.

Blank pages live in us. Every time a new sheet is turned, look through with murky eyes—where we can almost—not quite—make out the words. I wonder sometimes if this is the remembering. What is an ink wash without the water? Water without the brush? What words are left in the thickets of the bristles and which do we paint with? I think of the facets within myself that pull poetry, and it's always love. Abundance and lack. When I remember a sense of self, is it met with love too?

Beautiful moments, beautiful people. Lately, I've been thinking about the notion of moments. The capturing of a bird's wing, the peeling of bark. Shadows fighting for light. I've been thinking about hands being held, and the way honey falls mimics the way we fall in love. And how my body is slanted from the way I move forward. How many moments exist that we have no recollection of? How soft is a thought that shaped you? Does that bird's wing follow the same curve of your neck?