Arm’s Reach

I reached for the cord in the dark

and left a clumsy, wet-glass mark.

The water spilled across the wood,

doing the damage that it could.

There’s a ring of dust on the bottle of pills

for the headaches and the winter chills.

An earring without a mate lies there

next to a tangle of shed brown hair.

It’s a museum of the things I touch

that never seem to amount to much.

A graveyard for the stuff I need

to keep the morning from taking the lead.