a bedside table and an ashtray and an antique
chair; a mattress and a coffee mug;
an unwashed cotton blanket and a rug
my mother used to own.
I used to have
a phone. I used to
have another
room, a bigger broom, a wetter sponge.
I used to water my bouquet
of paperclips and empty pens, of things
I thought I’d want to say if given chance;
but now, to live, to sit somehow, to watch
a particle of thought dote on the dust
and dwindle in a little grid of shadow
on the sunset’s patchy rust seems like enough.
— Malachi Black
(Originally in