Irrational

By Emma Neale

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On the carpet in the hallway

a scrap of black, small as a finch

 

soft as a pillowcase and ripped

in the shape of a spread cape

 

warm as the sun-pinked ear of a leveret 

its ragged shred nearly petal-thin

 

shed like a day’s dust 

in the flurry of the morning routine

 

snagged from an old cloth bag, perhaps, 

or one of the children’s T-shirts

 

I crumple it up as if to hide a small waste-crime 

and strike, dread quick-snakes my skull

 

torn from its shadow, the goblin of anxiety

hyperventilates beside itself

 

lost decades ambush the rooms

what have we done, what have we done

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