Where Loneliness Lives

In shoes with their laces untied, a picture frame with image faded, in a hotel room whose guest is dust, a drawer, empty, but for rusted pins. In the letter that you never reply to, the bin not emptied, in a phoneline disconnected, a priest flockless - no sermon to utter. You got up from the dinner table and told me to wash the dishes. I put them in the sink but left them, neglected, and the memory of you hardened, crusted. I told myself I’d scrub them when you came back. Flakes float in greasy water like leaves aimless in a puddle, the suds lamely lapping at burnt leftovers - a tired ocean current feigning interest in destroying castles. In a kettle without water boiled, a car seat with no belt, an artist’s palette blank, a notebook with no impressions of thought. The deaf person’s signing without hands, in the umbrella without ribs, in calendars void of days, a clock with hands counting backwards, trapped in the amber of time. A mosquito caught in a tree’s sap.