Grid Work

The magazine on the table is ten years old,

full of faces that have already started to fade.

I leaned my head back against the drywall

and counted the tiny holes the factory made.

There is a water stain in the far-left corner,

a brownish bloom where the roof must have leaked.

It looks like a coast or a country of salt

where the air is thin and the mountains are peaked.

I’d rather look at the dust on the grid

than at the woman crying into her phone.

One tile is slightly out of its frame,

hanging by a corner, entirely alone.