to explain the glass 

i sometimes imagine someone
hurling bottles at the sidewalk:
brown & green. they've been 
saving these up for this purpose
a great big bucket nearby the door.
now it's that day,
the same every month where
they go down to the empty 
grocery store parking lot 
to release something. close to the ocean
in chincoteague the sand is just smashed shells.
when i was small i would think 
that with enough patience they could all 
be put back together.
i would take handfuls of shell &
feel the sharpness like a bowl
of dinosaur teeth. now this person,
let's call them a boy, still throwing bottles.
this person is me. i'm throwing bottles
at the asphalt. each is bursting like
a firework & the glass scatters.
i like to pretend 
there was something precious inside
each bottle that disappears on impact:
a wedding ring, a secret,
a pair of baby shoes. there are baby shoes
stepping on the crushed shells.
there are bare feet roaming the glass.
this is my parking lot & i will 
break what i need to:
soda & beer bottles. a lover sleeping 
in a room of brown glass.
a pair of legs wading into the ocean.
the ocean always pretending 
to be so much farther away
than it really is. a shore of broken bottles.
i'm throwing shells at the pavement
& they're not breaking so 
i take a rock & i feel like
a piece of nature to be 
so forceful. i smash them with
bronzed baby shoes that aren't
my own. i break the whole basket
of bottles & when i'm done 
i touch the fragments.
i pretend a church window died here 
or maybe a ship in jar.
i want to put them all back together
as an exercise in patience
but i don't have patience so 
i go to that shore
drive all night to get there.
wade into the water
feeling the snapped edges
under my feet.