Bin. Feeling Lonely
These days too quiet echoes lonely
The house’s walls close in. So I walk
Past all the weekly trash cans
Congregated at the curb
Birdsong in the air, someone’s radio
on their porch, still too quiet inside.
MOM, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
white kindergarten letters painted
Six inches high on the trashcan’s side.
Love Mom via trash can? Who does this?
And why?
MOM, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
Writer, is your mom trash?
Do you feel like refuse? Are you full and need emptying?
Is all your filial devotion contained
In the act of taking the garbage out?
MOM, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
An unassailable sentiment;
I love my Mom too,
Just not with white paint on my trash can.
I’ve never, ever written Love and Mom in letters
that big. Why not? I love my Mom too.
It’s lonely when I’m with her
It’s always never enough
With her, somehow. Never enough moments,
enough enthusiasm, enough attention.
She claims I’m withholding; calls just when
I’m busiest. I feel lonely.
MOM, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
Writer, perhaps it’s not trash,
But you had to find a way, some way,
any way (your mom’s like mine)
to overwhelm for once and for all
her primordial Never Enough.
Did it work? Was she pleased, for once pleased?
Perhaps I shall drive
a thousand miles, without stopping
Paint pot and detail brush grocery bagged on the car seat
To graffiti my mom’s trash before dawn:
MOM, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
