fishbones

they punctuate my mornings

these small, folded pins

punched and tensioned steel, waved and capped

flung into the world by the millions, invisible and forgotten

until they pile by my window

along the lip of the sink

in the dusty right angles where bed meets floor

they alight

the small and large, all subtly glistening shades of straw

of earth and cave-dark

after you leave

after coffee cupped in your hands

and sheets still-warm and smelling of you

they find each other

and clumsily, slowly

form a nest

in the high center of my chest