We used to fight about butter.
We would fight about a lot of things, except about important things. Instead, we would fight about leaving the lights on, dirty socks, missing keys, and butter.
You wanted the butter on the shelf of the fridge right in front of your face, so you could easily reach for it. I wanted the butter in the door, on the top. Because that's how my great-grandmother had had it, and my grandmother, and my mother. I didn't like to change tradition.
And we would fight about what kind of butter. You wanted salted, I wanted unsalted. I guess that was because you had a salty personality, and I had a very bland and unsalted personality.
Most of the time when we fought about butter, it was about bread crumbs in the butter can. I hated bread crumbs in the butter, but you would always somehow manage to get whatever you last ate in the can. You were in a hurry, always in a hurry. And you didn't have time to clean the knife before dipping it back in.
It made me so mad, but now I look back and I wonder why I would get so angry.
Maybe there were other reasons, maybe I just had a bad day. But I remember in August, on our last day together, we had fought about the butter that morning.
I wish we hadn't fought about it. I wish I wasn't mad at you that day. I wish I could have held you instead of yell at you.
But I didn't, and now you're gone.
I don't care much about butter anymore. The thought of eating it makes me sick to my stomach. But when I do buy it, it goes right in front of my face, so I can reach it easily. It's the salted kind, too. And I don't bother worrying about getting bread crumbs in there, either.
I don't know why I've changed my habits so easily. Maybe it's because it brings you back to me, for just a little bit.
There was a time, right after you left, where I obsessively bought butter. Your favorite kind. It filled my fridge, filled that middle top shelf where you had always wanted the butter to sit.
But you didn't come back to me. You were gone. And all I had was butter.
YOU ARE READING
BURN (Wattys2015?)
Poetry"Poetry...is thoughts that breathe and words that burn."--Thomas Gray "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." --Leonard Cohen Poems on the tough stuff in life. Poems on the crazy good stuff in li...
