broken bottles

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I think about what's left by the wayside
Scuttled remains left wilting
along rail lines
Scuppered sentences held aloft
and hung to dry
Scumbled labels and some broken bottles,
by the by
It's trash, really.
It's all trash.
I think of it, of them
I can hold them in my mind for
a moment, hold it
sacred and secure and
remembered like a
loyal friend or your dad
and his legacy that
he leaves for you but
in the end.
It's trash.
And I throw it away.
Join in the piles of refuse
that litter the mind
and linger like shadows.
And the shadows of things that I loved, once.
But it's trash.
And I throw it away.
Discard these wanton thoughts like sundries
with nought left but
rot and blot and
snot in the clot in my heart.

Strike through your whole letter and
put it in a bottle you drop in the ocean and
run away so that
someone finds nothing and
thinks of no one and
remembers who you never said you were
and chucks you like trash.

Major Arcana. The cups won't hold
the water of the sea
and yet you drink it with a straw.
The cranes bend their necks
and ruffle their tarred feathers at thee
Minor Arcana. There's enough microplastics
in your brain
to make a spork to eat your TV dinner
and sharpen your sword on the soft cheese
you forgot to call your grey matter.

And I strike through your whole letter
when I find this broken bottle
by the wayside and
I forget who you never told me you were.

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