What’s Left
Rae Liberto is a queer poet and nurse living in the Bay Area. Their work has been featured in Sinister Wisdom, The Lavender Review, Foglifter Journal, and in Black Lawrence Press’ They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.
The bottles are in the trash with the rest of itI couldn’t look at them there emptywaiting to be filled
there is no water in the faucetnone in the hose or the bathtubbecause no one lives here anymore.
It has ended but no one is askingpermission to be victorious
We work the sand, it takes morethan smiles to uncover a sense of worth
what is a healthy self-esteem anyway?
To be that kind of a womankind of a man if we enduresummer will pull a hard harvestleave pride near dead
And what is left but to pour out the sun also?
Throw away the last of itreroute desire, bodies firstthen this, the voice, in an open container.
Leave the wind, yes, and side lying on grasswith sweet dirt sweating through the green.
Was it green? I don’t rememberI don’t want to.