Knucklebone

we’re all looking for someone in our lives
grasping at the wrong shoulder in the dark
and holding on with grim-jawed stubbornness
as the one we want observes us and sighs
and opens a newspaper for the wait
long and white and as clinically cold
as a hospice corridor; its lights blink
and the water in the cooler is stale,
and swims with dead fish, yet all of us walk
with our little plastic cups and drink full
serotonin with its gelatine seeds
buds and crawls screaming with its grass feelers
until we start anew with the same face
and nothing changed underneath, but we smile
a glossy, white, school photograph rictus
and wear our rings on knucklebone, and bake
til all the flour is gone and we stare
at our empty shelves with the uncanny
sureness that we saw someone, something there