A Year Later

By Brit Barnhouse

What you’re eating isn’t healthy. Do you see it? You
always said the Holy Trifecta of impolite conversation
was money, religion, and politics, and I ate it up until
I starved on lack of substance. Do you see that you’re
withering too? I’m not asking for atonement, as if
mistakes could be scrubbed out with tumbleweeds of
steel, though you could use a good seasoning to get all
that rust off. I want you to see things the way they are:
Torn as vocal chords and sweet from fermented
buyer’s remorse bottled up and bursting. You should
know by now dollar bills steeped in hot water don’t
sooth the throat, despite all your sucking and tugging.
I could salvage the yeast from this batch, sell it as a
novel extraction to be lapped up while supplies last,
but this is more than a vat problem, a one-off fluke to
be ignored. This is more than incorrect packaging,
though God knows we can be easily fooled by the
right font in under 140 characters. This is a source
problem I won’t wait for you to catch up with. I will
keep turning fields where failure is a fistful of nitrogen
swept under the rug. I will plant new crops of opened
eyes, soaked and salted, and one day I will become
drunk off your bitterness.

Brit spends quite a bit of time contemplating how writing can be used to communicate complex ideas in accessible language and how storytelling grips us into action when it is most needed. Most of her own writing stems from lessons found in nature but when she isn’t writing about the ever-blurred lines between animals and humans, Brit can be found hoping for close encounters with whales in the Puget Sound, giving her dogs belly rubs, or tossing treats out to the neighborhood crows. Read more of her work at britbarnhouse.wordpress.com.

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