Dawn
finds me in a sparse tenor;
a pencil sharpener,
a small, turned-off radio set
in a small bedroom;
a pencil dancing somnambulically
like a drowsy princess locked in a tower;
the mentioned parties
figuring only as their forced attendance
in space-time, half-asleep, lowkey,
not obvious at all;
their whereabouts faint reminiscenses of ghosts,
myself a loose approximation,
faint on my timeline;
this room upstairs an outgrowth
on the staircase;
a dry seed capsule on a stalk,
ready to burst