ABBIE DOLL

Driftwood jewels

hello there, hi, it’s us: the keys
you ditched on a windy whim~~remember?

we, the (in)disposed(of) rustic décor
with our own rusted keyring cores,

secured to this beach-bleached flotsam fence, barely stable
with our tender angled lean, alabaster boards cinched taut [enough]

together, paperclip-cable twisted, reminiscing on our former years
of middle-class support, before the solidity of our security

reduced itself to the way in which we’re adhered~~before we got :stuck:
with these trash-adjacent debatable days, aimless

but hey, at least we’ve got the sound of the surf~~
the comforting collide of our * jin*gle * jan*gle * jun*gle *

alas, this existence is || nothing || but windblown stiffness, sun-stained
& sun-drained: corroding gradually in the salty spill of trauma-trenched tears

despite our desertion, we haven’t surrendered: our key-carved identities~~
all those things we once (un)locked, vehicles we used to flick on & off,

junkyard clunkers whose only operating hours now
-adays are aluminum-wrapped, glass-shard memories

nightstand diaries bursting with inky angst, all those chest-close(d)
secrets whose briny hearts we refuse to let oil-spill loose

& even though you’ve cast us aside, we remain  s t i l l
somehow tethered… & also adrift…

we noose-weary, wrecked & weathered trinkets,
dangling here alongside the tumbling tide ~~ 

Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Door Is a Jar Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and Pinch Journal Online, among others. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.