Staying Down

Sunlight falls
in a slanted gold rectangle
onto the wooden floor,
illuminating the patina
of dust and a hundred doghairs:
the detritus of a room never swept.
It doesn't bother me.

In the windows
the curtains hang like ghosts.
Silent clansmen,
they are watching me,
waiting for me to move.
I will not, I will stay
motionless, immoveable
for the rest of my days.

The sheets press my skin
like slabs of concrete.
I will flatten here, become a thin
pancake of bone and muscle,
plank of blood and viscera.
Or better, become nothing at all,
absorbed into cotton and coil spring,
part of something with purpose,
somewhere only function matters

and you mean nothing to me.