This morning I woke up a little earlier than usual
and grabbed some leftover boiled peanuts out of the fridge,
which I ate cold.

They seemed to have lost a bit of their charm,
since I always ate them hot at a picnic table in the market,
and I was usually accompanied by a friend or two.

So I sat shelling the cold peanuts,
with a paperback in front of me on the table,
which I neglected to read because my fingers were rather wet.

After a significant amount of time, during which I shelled peanuts
and pondered the various happenings and constituencies of my small lifetime,
I began to read.

And as if days of time had lapsed,
the empty shells had turned a churlish gray color,
next I looked at them.

Upon wriggling my fingers through the mound of halved shells
in a sort of diaphanous trance as I read, I stumbled upon a shell that had yet to be cracked,
which awoke me from my reverie in bestseller prose.

I was quite puzzled about how I ever could have missed it earlier.
I proceeded to roll it around in the palm of my hand, noticing its incredibly light weight.
When I opened it, there was nothing inside.