This I Will Gladly Lose

When I had finally

peeled the avocado

of my grief,

and thin strips of

alligator skin

had dropped away,

one every year—

two when the dark of the moon

fell hard on a solstice night—

I sharpened my knife

and cut again

through the

mossy green sorrow,

tensed against 

remembrance,

until the point

struck home

and a hard stone

of anger struck

back, a dense ball of

righteous rightness

in a pit of

aggrieved anger,

nestled there

and nurtured

all along

by me.

I held it up

into the light 

and laughed.

The fruit of these years

I will keep,

but this lopsided marble

I will gladly lose

in a game of keepsies

with God.

You may be the same
as you were then,

for all I know.

But I will never be again.