The Underside

My kid knocks something under.

I get down on my knees—

this is what adults do, we retrieve,

we fix, we pretend

there's a point to reaching.

The wood grain is different here.

The light doesn't come this way.

There's a spider web

strung tight as guilt,

and something dark stuck to the wood—

gum, probably, ancient and hard,

impossible to date.

Was it mine?

I can't remember if I chewed gum at eleven,

if I stuck it here deliberately

or if someone else left it

and I've been living on top of it

without knowing.

There are traces of stickers peeled off years ago,

adhesive residue marking the spot

where something mattered enough

to stick down.

Now there's just the ghost of glue.

My hand comes away dusty,

sticky in places,

and I'm thinking:

this is the underside of everything,

this is what holds us up

and no one ever looks at.