Dawn

finds me in a sparse tenor;

a pencil sharpener,

a small, turned-off radio set

in a small bedroom;

a pencil dancing somnambulically

like a drowsy princess locked in a tower;

the mentioned parties

figuring only as their forced attendance

in space-time, half-asleep, lowkey,

not obvious at all;

their whereabouts faint reminiscenses of ghosts,

myself a loose approximation,

faint on my timeline;

this room upstairs an outgrowth

on the staircase;

a dry seed capsule on a stalk,

ready to burst