junk

by Leslie F. Miller

she and I will pour with nonchalance the contents of this marble box: three dog whiskers, the fang of a tarantula, her dried umbilical cord, pinched and blue like a stone, the orange feather of a friend’s fancy bird, grammy’s shimmering silver bridge, my own four wisdom teeth, and a few good misspelled fortunes, delighting in your awkward squirm as something animal rolls across the ripples in the couch and touches your naked thigh.

she saved the cord! you’ll say to them later, as if we are somehow broken, this well-practiced list your new soliloquy against a mother and her girl, but we are all tethered to our treasures, and who’s to judge the things we save: the care with which you dig the dahlia corms and tuck them in a burlap sack, the flowers that you paralyze in books, the seeds you squeeze in envelopes. who’s to judge a box of lonely things we couldn’t bring ourselves to lose?

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Leslie F. Miller likes to break things and put them back together in a random, yet tasteful, order. She is a writer, a photographer, a graphic designer, and a mosaic artist who holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. Her first nonfiction book, Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt, was published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster. She is currently working on a book of poems made of words suggested by Facebook friends. “Quiescence” is one of those Facebook poems.

This entry was posted on April 17, 2011 at 10:28 am and is filed under Junk 3: Spring 2011, Leslie F. Miller with tags box of lonely things, couldn't bring ourselves to lose, hoarding, Leslie F. Miller, Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour Sugar Butter Eggs Vanilla Baking Powder and a Pinch of Salt, pour with nonchalance, Quiescence, who's to judge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.