6/9/2020

it is the first day
of my so-called Jesus year
but i have only

prayed twice in my life
and i suspect

some things are not meant
to be saved.

my mother cannot throw
anything away.

when she and my aunt
cleaned out
their parents’ house

April packed up
every last effect into
the Honda,

even my grandfather’s 
old boxers, and
now they are in a rented

storage space with
the records
no one wanted.

i am shocked
when she tells me
the monthly fee

to store all of it
but i suppose
i shouldn’t be.

there’s always
a cost
to holding

onto things:
old nightgowns,
cruel lovers.

the ways in which
the things we cling to
weigh us down.

Marie Kondo says
if it doesn’t
spark joy, let it go

and i am no
minimalist
but I think

she has a point.
i cannot make
my mother leave

her angry boy-
friend but
someday

i will have
to clean out
her house

and i think
i am reaching
the age

when you start
to feel how finite
this all is

and you think
you’d better know
what kind

of person
you’re going to be.
my mother

takes thousands
of photographs
amassing archives

of moments
that will now exist
in a way, forever

i try to distill
every feeling
down to

its essence
strip myself layer
by layer

i am now
a year older
than my

mom was
when
she had me

i suppose
it is easy
for me, with

no husband
or children

to preach
feeling untethered

but i’m going
to do it anyway:

there is nothing
more important in
the world

than freedom.
you can only hold
so much

and still
move comfortably.

if doesn’t spark joy,
you should probably
strongly consider

letting it go.

Amy Saul-Zerby is the author of two poetry collections, Paper Flowers Imaginary Birds on Be About It Press and Deep Camouflage on Civil Coping Mechanisms. You can find her poems online in The Rumpus, The Chicago Review of Books, Hobart, and elsewhere.  She edits Voicemail Poems, has two cats, and is a bipolar Gemini with a Scorpio moon but she’s handling it.