Trash Night

It started with small things
found on the street, or won
from cranky vending machines
in badly lit supermarkets
on Flatbush Avenue.
There, and worse places.
Then came demands.

I realize now that all you wanted
was for the fairness to feel like the solution,
having agreed or disagreed,
then come to something we could both live with.
To make promises and keep them.
You wanted compromise,
the bending suited you.

I took all the trinkets, the bits of cloth and paper,
small flags of hope, like something a bird would bring to her nest to
make it better, to hold her children, to seal out the weather and the hunters.
The brown boots,
the watercolor sets,
the books I tried to read, but couldn't.

What if the next thing, I wondered, is a tree?
Or some other exhaling thing, that will ask me to shift
my behavior from one set of know-hows to another
far more exhausting routine of watering, walking, care and feeding.
Do you understand how
eating something different for breakfast could erase me?

On trash night,
I lined everything up in rows on the sidewalk.
It looked like a garage sale,
everything you ever gave me.