Blue Bin Gospel
Holiday’s over, floor looks like a cheap parade died in the living room light,
paper mountains, plastic bows, candy wrappers glinting like they survived a war last night.
Someone waves a trash bag open, like a mouth that wants to swallow everything we’ve done,
I grab a cardboard box instead, say, “Let’s give all this glittered nonsense one more run.”
Peeling tape off snowmen faces, stacking stars with cartoon deer in crooked lines,
saving ribbons like my grandma did, her kitchen drawer was full of second chances tied in twines.
Kids roll their eyes while I smooth creases, call me “Recycling Saint” between laughs and crumbs,
they don’t see the little storm inside me, counting every plastic halo on my thumbs.
All those years we stuffed the bags and never asked where they would go,
now the ocean coughs up bottle caps and tinsel ghosts along the shore of what we know.
I can’t rewrite the past Decembers stacked like boxes in my head,
yet I can choose which parts get buried and which ones learn to live instead.
By the time the tree stops blinking, bin is full of yesterday’s disguises pressed and thin,
trash can lighter, chest a little softer, small reform tucked under skin.
I kiss a rescued bow and slap it on my shirt like I survived this holy mess,
if the world ends in cardboard and candy cane stripes, at least I tried to wreck it less.
Holiday’s over, but the lesson’s sitting by the door in colored stacks,
recycling the wrapping, learning slowly how to carry joy without breaking both our backs.