Spring Cleaning

In constant fear you’d become the hoarder your abusive father was, you toss everything that lacks immediate utility. You bring paint cans to the recycling center when you’ve used just a smidge of their subterfuge on a reclaimed nightstand or Mexican pottery planter. You discard me finding no use for affection, for handholding in the movies, for anything more than a chicken peck of a kiss. Why keep something around that doesn’t work for you anymore? Your father’s backyard is full of motors with thrown rods and clothes dryers with defective doors. All go into the dumpster, where you place me beside the Texaco sign with burned-out bulbs and a length of chain missing its master link.

Terry Jude Miller is a twice Pushcart Prize-nominated poet from Houston. He received the 2018 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize for his book, The Drawn Cat’s Dream. His work has been published in the Southern Poetry Anthology, The Lily Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, and The Oakland Review and in scores of other publications.