“Dental Floss”

Cheap dental floss    

—not the desired brand—    

            Frays    

            Leaves strands    

                        trapped    

Frustrated before sunrise    

            I fling the new container aside—    

                        thumping it into the trash    

                        announcing my irritation    

Temper flames my words,     

            “We had an entire conversation about this!”    

Feeling trivialized and minimized

            I cut to make him smaller   

And I braid those fine wax fibers 

            into Porter’s rope  

                        Giving it weight—

                                    Importance

Until 

            my snarling reflection    

            snaps me to The Big Picture 

It is—  

            after all—    

Only dental floss   

 

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman