Empty the French press
laundry basket
compost bin
dish rack.

Fill the shopping list
washing machine
toilet roll holder
lunchboxes.

Survey the mountaintop
cards, gift offerings, 
and resume life 
in the foothills.

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Good closure is hard to find. Seize it where you can:
throwing out sandals that you can not only feel 
the sidewalk through, but see it as well;
using the elusive, diligent end of a bar of soap;
scrapping the top that’s so full of holes 
it’s now indecent (and not in a good way);
retiring a bedhead toothbrush that looks 
more like electrocution than poised for action.

Let your lifetime’s unresolved endings, and crossed wires 
that sparked wildfires, be fractionally, minutely appeased
as you sharpen that stump of a pencil for the last time
scapegoat spirals twirling into the bin.

Time does not heal all wounds, but as time keel-hauls goons
while timely thaw looms; as tidings stall doom and ideals crawl tombs;
as tide clears pall gloom and tiny awe blooms, it is a small comfort.

A ballpoint pen that finally fades, hollow white groove on page,
is really no consolation for the parent who still isn’t sorry
ex who’d do it again if they could
doctor who won’t believe you
the comment you didn’t deserve

Jam dregs on toast is not the same as comeuppance,
dextrous, folded, pinching last squeeze of toothpaste
not the same as happy endings,
properly, zealously licked ice cream bowl
not just desserts. However, by an assemblage 
of lowly, closed, exposed, deposed things
we can cobble together an unmade monument 
to all that can never be put right.

Take your yawning shoes and really quite dead undies
stuff them into a tapped-out flour bag
with the smashed mug that you never really did like
final page of that notepad, last drips of shampoo for good measure

(Un)ceremoniously bin them, in place of the kid 
who should never have gotten away with that thing in primary school,
high school, your last job, or this morning at breakfast.

Perhaps it explains our fascination with demolitions – 
subsonically, tectonically subconscious
or vicariously in the forefront of our minds:
deliberate destruction with cinematic, professional efficacy.
I will never see perfect justice
but I watch a magnificent building be smashed to pieces
in my holey socks, with the last swig of tea, and am soothed.