Entropy

I'm staring at a moldy lime, half a lime,

rotting slowly on my kitchen counter.

The light above the sink is bleak and unbalanced;

I only replace one bulb, and it shines starkly

on half the dirty walls, the misshapen cookware.

Outside, the air is still stagnant.

In fall and in winter my verbs are active:

despite the stillness, the indecipherable transitions,

the tacit decay and then the dead months,

I watch things happen. The colors shift,

and the ice breaks, or doesn't break,

just shifts in eerie susurration, unearthly.

Late at night I look at it, the moldy rind,

and it is of course a metaphor for my life.

It is split open and it is half-over, and it is rotting from the outside in.

I pick it up and feel its weight in my hands.

Hot air wafts through the window and my fingers contract,

sinking through the skin, pushing into rotting flesh like a corpse.