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Scrape at my soul jar and rattle that knife,
It’s thinned out, see, and is streaked at the sides.
You’ve had my preserves, my sugar, my life,
the berries, seeds, and odd trapped bug besides.
Now you can see through it, smeared as it is
with memories stuck to the sides like bread crumbs.
The label is peeling at the edges,
identity coming unglued, the gum
of the underside clinging to the clear
convex surface in the pretense of hope
but with all the strained opaqueness of fear;
Your knife clinks away at my inverse slope,
the empty reverse of fear, where the sweet
still clings in clumps however incomplete.
