Consign it, then, to the flames

These things are for burning:

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The old shirt that never fit you well and you never liked anyway, keeping it reluctantly because it was a gift.

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The regret you felt last time you said goodbye to someone who attempted to cage you with their tears.

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My old journals wherein I condemn my unmedicated soul to endless suffering, mapping brain chemistry into manifest destiny.

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The old tray table that buckles under a broken fourth leg, done carrying my tv dinners like an indentured servant.

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The glossy polaroids of your ex, the pile of clothes that can no longer contain me.

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The bathroom scale, which we declare our master no more.

(when I drop the flat black mass of it in, the fire whispers over its edges, caressing it like a blind child deciphering the dimensions of a gift-

it does not burn immediately, and we realize when it does, it will probably be toxic as hell, but we're both too drunk to care.)

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There are no resolutions this year. There are only things to swear off, to let go, a Marie Kondo-ing of our collective cluttered consciousness.

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Procrastination, you say, self-doubt, and the fire goes wild in anticipation, a log popping like a gunshot at the start of a race.

Now that paper is on the table, anything is game, as long as it can be expressed, written down in the slovenly hand of a future hangover recipient.

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Negative talk, you say, Hanging out with complainers (the fact that we're complainers both eludes us).

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Bedrotting, I say, pen flying over paper. But also pressuring myself to be productive 24/7.

I ball that one up and flick it in- and the fire leaps up to meet it like a tame wolf doing a trick. It loves a juicy contradiction just as much as me.

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Everything we add makes the flames grow higher, licking and snapping at the lamp black night. Nothing burns like paper, the way it crackles and chars, the madness unspooling from my brain eaten up by hungry molten heat in a matter of seconds. Write this down and burn it, a part of so many spells and rituals, and only now do I truly appreciate why.

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Drinking! I exclaim, and you toss your half-empty can of beer into the pit to drive home the stake. The aluminum crumples and blackens, the alcohol making the rippling waves of heat flare for one instant. I would follow up but there’s still an inch of malted gold hops left in mine, and beer is beer, especially when I’m pretending it’ll be gone tomorrow.

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For last of all we have saved the clock, which the both of us are convinced only ever bullied us, though we still grip its smooth edges, waiting as the countdown clicks down, ironic traditioninsisting we wait just one last time for that three, two,

One