the equinox has peeled back snow from the roadside,
a layer of plastic wrap whose shine gives
way to beer cans crushed and cigarettes stubbed
beneath winter’s sparkling wrappings.
i bend with gloved hand and deposit refuse
into a yellow plastic bag, the only one
our waste center allows.
it’s best not to imagine how one shoe runs out
on its mate, how a fast food wrapper insulates
itself on a back country ditch, an individual
flosser, or condom stripped from skin.
while gathering the litter others fling
from their windows, intentional exorcisms
of a single-use society, i think of my sister—
how the blunt force of law bruised
her in the gutters no one could see, subordinated
her body to a single-use, a throw-away woman
whose womb became so toxic she collapsed
in the parking lot with fever, with cramps that crumpled
her onto herself and septicemia coursing
through her veins before a hospital would care
for her. her body was too compromised to cure.
in the clinic when i peel the white coverlet
from her face to ask what i can do, she keens.
i’m barren now, too contaminated
to carry life.
SARA LYNN EASTLER lives in Midcoast Maine where she dutifully serves her feline overlord and a flock of treat-loving chickens. She is a recovering biochemist, freelance contributor to the Southern Review of Books, and MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte. Her work can be found in Stanza, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Voices of Decolonization.
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