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There is a sound:

It reminds me of

brown paper towels from

the men’s room being

coerced into drying dirty hands,

And walking on bleached

cornhusks through a maze

at a pumpkin patch louder

than an exhausted hay ride,

And an apology note crumpled

by a hand that wants to write what

it wants not what

should be written;

I imagine the dark space of

the paper towel rounded sharp,

and the shadow of the husks

a damp dark,

and the words an emery board on

too short a nail whisper just past

the note.

All of those crevices, all

of those slight and grand chasms.

There’s a kind of finality to that sound:

of drying hands,

of walking on dead things,

of the unrealized stab of a word.