Gratitude.
My sister, Jeanette,
took me to the Flatiron Ruins when I was twelve
forcing me to drink more water than I thought possible,
looking back to check my steps every few minutes.
“They used to do tours,” she said,
letting sand run through her fingers,
“And tell you about the records they found,
the perfectly preserved pack of Lucky Strikes,
the caved in passageways of the haunted twentieth floor...”
I'm hungry,
I said, likely with less awe than she'd hoped.
She unwrapped a ration pack, breaking off half
to share with me.
“But we didn't bury files and cigarettes down there.”
She was talking more to herself than to me.
“We buried the species we used to be,
an archaic way of relating.
We buried war. We buried God.”
Anything else?
I always snickered at how she got so serious.
She smiled.
“We buried something they called
the One Dollar Bill.”
You act as though we did this to ourselves.
“We did, in a way.
And we should be grateful.”
Robin Sinclair is a queer, genderqueer writer of mixed heritage and mixed emotions, currently on the road reading from their debut book of poetry, Letters To My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls (Cosmographia Books 2018). Find Robin at RobinSinclairBooks.com and on Twitter (@Ghost_Of_Mary).