A gift from abandonment

I was a present given to someone,

Wrapped in a calendar from 2001.

I do not know what I am

Because no one has opened me yet.

They shifted me

From the cupboard to the basement

With all the other junk

To be thrown away.

I was in the junkyard;

Hot

Under the sun,

Wet

In the rain,

Wet

In dog-piss.

A puppy gnawed at me

And I made it vomit,

Telling it I was not edible.

Like that, I learned its language.

I learned to speak

With

Birds,

Trees,

The drunk beggar

Naked on the street.

They all spoke dialects of one language

The calendar still covered me

But I was rotting with it

Into the earth

I am still that rotting thing

But after all that was taken from me,

I was given something.

Something to cover all the losses.

The language of everything;

Poetry.