Silver bands encircle withering fingers like planets,
the perpetual orbits of my index, middle, and ring.
Gazing endlessly at the ceiling from the sunken duvet,
pondering deeply—
Am I a chain's soft whisper or fractured platter?
Porcelain once pristine,
seen but scattered, across the kitchen marble.
a beloved bowl and useful.
Born of quarry's womb, kin of the chemical elements.
One of a millionfold in earth's embrace,
hewn, shaped, smoothed, bartered,
Reduced to a single, awkward grain in the wind.