Someone, hiding inside the walls, tells me this is not cause and effect.

All day, someone has been sliding along, stealing my fossils

and the paraphernalia I drop along the way: heads-up pennies,

skinny snowflakes, most likely a semicolon or two; I can taste the wind.

There is no cause, to no effect: there is no stopping the turn of the tides,

nor the range of motion in which we move to pull the moon back to earth.

Everyone stops once. I stopped a long time ago, I spun in my orbit,

which is there: there is no they; they only stopped to question my fossils,

the strange bits of god and man everyone leaves in passing.

They know I am no good at nothing. They see me shedding in the fall. They watch me

pull the leaves out of my hair and fling them into space.

I am not the only thing alive. They will push in your fingerprints and no one

will remember your name.