untouched

The hands have their tells—

paint and ink and inadvertent 

pointing, lonely limbs and

the counting by the fingers—

but the dust is always telling tales

out of school, shelves devoured

by this pressing detritus,

heaped and layered and

giving away the game. I gather 

up my unused limbs and

fling the husk around the sprawl,

masked and tasked and 

teeming with irrelevance,

the work of the body the only work

we are allowed however 

we imagine the mythos and 

our magic of summoned 

threat and consequence,

the plague year outranking 

this inessential effort,

this unwanted animal

untouched despite disease or

custom, folded up and 

forgotten, dusty missives and broken poems

not worth the accounting of

every last finger left.