After Decades
You hate how long I keep an empty tube of toothpaste, squeeze it beyond dry for one more evening’s brush. Or the bottle of ketchup, like my mother did, balanced atop the new one, unhealthy pyramid waiting for a crash just to gather the last possible drop. Salvage is a way of life, a kind of thinking long about the smallest remnants.
When I leave you, it will be this holding on, this making do with tossed away fragments, like the end of mayonnaise, the clink of knife against almost clean glass or peanut butter relics scratched onto toast, how those noises irritated but will now echo in your mind. I have finally believed you, see how saving scraps is too much work.
These final drips of attention, the leftover love I worked to preserve, can now be dropped like litter or tumbled into the garbage truck one Tuesday morning when lilacs open and birds call like victims from the trees. The cartons of time, stored and protected, now lay abandoned at the curb when I drive away.
Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Northern Virginia with her husband and two mostly grown kids. Wandering in the woods and across the page are two of her favorite activities. Her work has been published in journals such as: The American Journal of Poetry, Gargoyle, and The Potomac Review. She has two chapbooks of poetry: Noticing the Splash with BoneWorld Press and Water Shedding with Finishing Line Press and her collection of short fiction, A Drawn and Papered Heart has been shortlisted in multiple contests.