Supply Line

The landlord left the old pipe by the dumpster.

I took a section. Four or five inches.

Green at one end where the solder joint

had been—corroded into something almost

decorative.

The interior was dark. Furred white

with mineral deposits, decades of the building's water

leaving a record of itself

in a place no one was supposed to look.

I set it on the counter and kept walking past it.

Kept picking it up.

It was warm from sitting in the afternoon sun.

That's the part I can't explain cleanly—

the warmth of it, like something still running through,

though nothing was.

Thirty years in the wall.

Thirty years of hot and cold and pressure

and nobody thought about it once.

I know that's not remarkable.

I know exactly what I'm doing

when I stand here at the counter

smelling a piece of copper pipe

and refusing to put it down.