a piece of driftwood

picked up by you because it was the right shape — the kind of shape a hand is asking for without knowing. light as a paper box; the inside long since dried. perhaps once a fencing-stake, perhaps not. perhaps it floated from a wreck so old no one is keeping the count any more.

it weighs a hundred and twenty grams, give or take. lifted to the ear it does not sound like anything. lifted to the nose, faintly: salt, lichen, the woodsmoke of a stove on a shore that was not this one. closer in spirit to a harbour than to the forest it began in.

for now it lives across the windowsill, holding down a sheet of paper. one good shape per room is the rule, and this is the shape this room is keeping. near the fragment of rope and the shell, far from the kitchen.