I’ve become each and every thing
at one time or another.
Shutters silently sitting on either side
of a window. A gas leak
waiting to burst into flames in a basement.
Stones stacked into a wall
monochromatic and textured as old teeth.

Each has been my unraveling
and my clawing for a place.
Spool of red thread fallen from a table.

They’ve even been small deaths.
The movement of a rocking horse
after someone has left it, the anxious slowing,
the hobbling toward stillness,
it being not a tree or a horse,
but nicely carved wood
that is no longer breathing.