I shake the box
and you can hear
the clunk of cheap erasers
and loose change.
the weight shifts
like a topside crew
on a troubled barge.

I flick the ash
and where it lay
a thousand eyes
bleed for nothing.
and in passing
I may have crushed
a bead of sweat...
truant from
my brow.

it's the little things
that loom large
in the awkward heart
and so very slowly
the usual bloom
on the rose
is dismantled.

by a larger display
in a palm.