Some people make a bucket list
when they turn fifty or fifty-five.
I myself have a lot of buckets stored away
in various places,
and here is a list of them,
even though I'm only eighteen.
I have a wooden bucket--
it has worm holes,
smells like earthy rotten wood.
Grandma gave it to me years ago.
I think I used it once to carry crisp green apples back from an orchard in Charlottesville
and then left it in the backyard and forgot it was there.
I also have a rusty tin bucket.
It's rusted. It's covered in yellow rust.
I use it to throw at the neighbor's fat hoodlum cat.
It cut my hand once and I got stitches and a jagged scar shaped like Belgium.
There's another bucket, a pail,
a baby bucket,
sitting on the windowsill,
growing some carnations--red ones,
just like the ones in the film
Jean de Florette.
You haven't seen
Jean de Florette?
Go watch it, and next time you see me,
we'll have something to talk about
other than how awful your week was.
My favorite bucket
is an ivory bucket.
It's not rusty or rotten, and
it's never been used, never will be--Paul brought it back from India
and I keep it on a shelf with my Italian flag and German martini glass
I also have a bucket
that's a family heirloom.
Willy Wonka would say
"it smells like old people."
I imagine it also smells like cat, though--
my cat sleeps in it all day,
except when she's eating or chasing her tail.
I guess that means my heirloom bucket smells like old cat.
Delish
I have one last bucket--
it's buried in Canterbury.
Nevermind, that's Becket.
Thomas Becket.
Stupid typo.
My
real last bucket I gave to
a handsome boy who took me
on my first date,
and he sent it back empty with some break-up note crumpled in the bottom,
riddled with spelling errors.
I told myself he was too illiterate anyways.
I had polished it, filled it with chocolate,
his birthday was right after Lent ended,
and he'd gone off with some other girl
who smoked green cigarettes
and wore lipstick rouge
and drank pink ladies
and danced a perpetual two-step whenever she walked
(while I clambered around in pointe shoes,
twisting ankles and breaking toes),
he'd gone off with her--
he even gave her some of my chocolate for her birthday.
It's my bathroom waste bucket.
© 2015 Abby Danfora
