Every time I walk..., sestina

Every time I walk past the kitchen

I see and smell that pot

The time has come

to wash the filthy pot,

the one that’s been soaking for a while now-

the gook and grease and foul smell have risen to the surface-

waiting for me

to do the work it takes to make it clean.

To make it clean

I have to come

clean with myself – be honest with me about me-

confess the way i've been living, problems with wine and pot,

bring all my issues, bad habits to the surface.

They’ve been waiting to be aired for a while now. 

But for a while now

I’ve been thinking it’s too hard to come clean.

If I dig down as deep as I can to bring all that stuff up to the surface

the devil himself might come

popping out! He’ll sit my lil ass right down on the pot

and let me know there’ll be no changing – he’s got me!

Still, the desire to make changes has been with me

for a long while now.

And every time I walk past the kitchen I see and smell that pot;

it’s just itching to get clean,

reminding me that the time has come

to be unafraid of what might surface.

On the surface,

I know what people see when they look at me-

a girl who’s come

a long way. Educated, employed, been doing real well for a while now.

But I know if I want to go further still, I need to clean

this pot.

So, ok. I’m going to clean this pot!

All the gook and grease that’s risen to the surface-

I am going to get it clean!

Me!

Because I’ve been wanting to for a while now,

and because the time has come!

And because I know that this pot is me-

things on the surface look good, but it’s been bad underneath for a while now.

I’m finally ready to go on and come clean now that hell and high water have come. 

 I can't remember which book I was reading. All I remember is the author writing something like, When you're ready to change your life, things are going to look real bad at first, because all of your issues are going to rise to the top to be dealt with. That's what inspired this poem. I decided to use the form of the sestina because sestinas work well with issues that repeat and resurface. It isn't fully autobiographical. None of my poems are. That's the beauty of being a poet -- one can tell the capital T Truth about life without revealing the facts about one's life.

I took this photograph in Kingston, Jamaica in 2018. I call it "Pot."