The Lost Ear

The dresser is a wall of fake oak

that hasn't moved since the year I arrived.

I put my shoulder into the weight of it,

the wood groaning against the floorboards.

There it is.

A small blue stud, a cheap plastic sun

wrapped in a thick coat of gray lint.

It fell the night the door slammed so hard

the pictures tilted on their nails.

I let it stay.

I let the dust have it for five years.