And though nobody knew what I would cost,
they kept me—a debt to be paid for centuries.
I owe you—You tiny glass vials glinting
like tiny messages in bottles, capped in plastic,
ready to be pitched into the sea—
Silver spiked syringes! Odorous alcohol swabs!
Oh, you IV bags and your tangle of lines and
the gloves the nurse wears to coax you into my vein!
Catheters! Bottles of saline! And gel!
Orange pill bottles! Childproof lids!
Surgical trays! Oxygen masks! Even you, the bag
they give me to hold my belongings!
Oh, hospital socks nubbed with plastic dots,
tucked into plastic sleeves, just so I stay put!
The pink-kidney shaped bowls where I’ve puked
float now somewhere in the Pacific
where I swim with my daughters in the
brilliant August sun, teaching them to float on
their backs, bellies pushed to the sky,
arms stretched wide—open to the sky.
My own body, when buried, will leach
into the soil, run to the sea, poisoning it all
long, long after I can be grateful for this cup of coffee,
my love’s sighs, my children’s laughter.
How many generations will live with my plastic
echoes scattered in the sand they run between their toes?
How many fish live with my plastic
in their guts? How many ducks have I choked?
How many more would I kill
to stay here—tethered and guilty and alive?
Meghan McClure is the author of the chapbook Portrait of a Body in Wreckages and co-author of A Single Throat Opens. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Tupelo Quarterly, American Literary Review, Pithead Chapel, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in California.
