Held

We carried decimal places in our pockets,

there was never enough change

to evenly distribute amongst us.

We put pennies under our tongue,

never noticing the green words growing out.

we nestled ourselves inside boxes like silverfish

swimming from page to page.

We wove blankets with blame and empathy for others

and died our thoughts of progress and peril

in complementary colors.

Our choice by natural selection never counted

on such a vast assortment of unparsed persons

holding onto everything in case the anchor 

dislodged and diluted by oxidation,
broken down into byte sized bits.

We will fill any holes with our fitting figures,

leaving no space for any one lone light to escape

in a flicker.




Painting by Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of David Rittenhouse, 1796 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.