Conductive

In the back of the drawer, near a lone corn skewer,

I found the crushed remains of a dinner gone wrong.

The silver is tarnished, the memories are truer,

wrapped in a ball where they don't quite belong.

I smooth out the sheet with the side of my thumb

until it reflects a face I don't know.

My fingertips ache and my senses go numb

from the metallic bite and the cold, gray glow.

It smells like the stove and a sharp, tinny salt,

a conductor of heat for a house gone chill.

I’m flattening the creases and finding the fault

in the shiny, thin skin of a world standing still.