Confined

Nothing but a precise

second hand is moving within

the solitary stillness of this house.

I convalesce and convalesce while

reading the daily wallpaper.

Knickknacks cling tightly

to their positions, dumbly

flaunting their faded novelty

close to books of past power

that slump on their shelves

like half-fallen dominoes.

Fatigued by the familiar and

glued down by gravity,

I lie back, later sit up,

then move about,

then sit again,

a restless captive of

fever and furnishings.

Every other person

in the world just now is

elsewhere and occupied.

Have I secretly died?

"Snap," replies the

house, settling.

I lie back down close to my

accurate quartz-driven clock

whose second hand counts out

sixty clockwise clicks and

on and on until

the wallpaper blurs

and nothing occurs.

All