Gravity

The house is a hollow bone today.

I am slumped in the kitchen chair,

elbows anchored to my knees,

watching the floor tiles.

In the black glass of the oven,

a stranger stares back.

My shirt has crawled up,

exposing the soft, pale roll of me,

the part I usually hold in.

When I finally stand,

my hips are mapped in red—

the angry, zigzag teeth

of an elastic waistband

biting into the quiet.