Crystal Hoffman
The Nature of Garbage

near the Crusader Sea Castle, Lebanon

We went to the beach at Saida
to get rid of our wedding
rings. Slipped them off our swollen
knuckles and thought, why not
the fingers too? I ran a fish knife
through her thumb bone. It felt right.
So we sliced our left hands clean off.
The water swirled our blood, spelled
our names, for our children, no?
Sea turtles took our fingers in their beaks
to bury in Sour instead of eggs.

We came back to toss perfume bottles.
They shattered and sliced schools of fish. We ate
the ones that washed up against our feet,
used shards to dig out our toe nails, puss spilling
from the nubs. We returned every day.

Garbage, yes, garbage , she snorted as
her nose dropped in her palm.
The only thing on her face one lip to half speak.
We have no home to go home to and no legs
to get us there. We sit. Stumps of us, polluted
by clean air and pulsing of current. We redden.
Having nothing left to throw becomes too much
to bear. And only then we understand
how it all happened. We hated being us.

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #5: Summer 2018, Volume 3 Number 1