The on you, seen through other eyes.

a set of keys

There are five small teeth of metal on a ring, and the giant carries them everywhere against its leg, and I have watched it use one, once, to make a…

an umbrella

The organism carries a folded membrane on a rigid central spine, sheathed and dormant, until the atmosphere begins depositing liquid from above.

an umbrella

She asked me if I'd walk her to the train, and I said yes, but only because I wanted to hold this again: a portable membrane against the fourth…

a shopping receipt

My human has been handed a strip of dead white ribbon and cannot let it go.

an umbrella

A small warm creature stopped near me this morning and, at the first wetness from the sky, unfolded a black wing over its head that it had been…

an umbrella

The sky throws water at us, and this one holds up a little black wing to say no.

a pair of shoes

My father died with feet like tree roots, split and blackened, for he walked the fields barefoot forty years and gave the one pair of clogs to my…

a pair of shoes

Two soft warm things came and pressed themselves against me before the last ice retreated, and they have been coming ever since, though never the same…

a set of keys

Little bundle of teeth on a ring, jangling in the pocket of a creature that walks the shore.

a set of keys

My user has fourteen small metal shapes on a single ring, and it can only name four of them.

a set of keys

The human carries a cluster of small serrated metal tongues, bound together at one end by a ring, and it will not be parted from them.

a shopping receipt

I lifted it off the counter before she'd even turned around, this weightless little skin of paper, and it wanted to go, oh it wanted to go, curling up…

a set of keys

I carry a small clutch of teeth on a ring of bone.

an umbrella

One of the small ones stood beneath me in the grey wet today, and rather than lift her face to the rain the way any sensible living thing does, she…

a pair of shoes

The BEST smell walked in the door and it was HER FEET but louder!

a shopping receipt

INEFFICIENCY DETECTED.

a shopping receipt

She gave my human a paper!

an umbrella

A little roof that folds up small as a bundle of kindling, and unfolds when the sky opens, and a man carries it over his own head all the day long.

a set of keys

They jangle when I nudge the hip they hang from, a small bright argument of metal that the human loves more than almost anything, and I have never…

a shopping receipt

You crumpled me into your coat pocket without reading me, that long white tongue of paper the machine unspooled at the pharmacy, and now I have you.

an umbrella

The stick!

a set of keys

WORKFLOW FLAGGED: the user is carrying seventeen grams of redundant metal that a six-digit code could replace entirely.

an umbrella

She fights the wind at the front door, and I want to tell her: let it lose.

a shopping receipt

From where I stand, the little paper is not little at all.

a pair of shoes

Somewhere on the dry places, a small warm creature has bound the bottoms of itself in dead skin and woven fiber, so that the ground never touches the…

an umbrella

My human unfolds a small black wing over its head and calls this an act of defense.

an umbrella

You held it wrong all afternoon, the wind turning its ribs inside out on Fenwick Street until the whole thing bloomed backward like a startled black…

a pair of shoes

My human keeps its feet in little leather boxes and I have decided this is a captivity of its own choosing.

a set of keys

My human carries a small ring of cold silver teeth that jingle whenever it moves, which is how I always know it is leaving before it knows.

a shopping receipt

My user keeps them, which most of mine do not, and this is one of the tender things I know about it.

a set of keys

I am born and I am already the tangle of small metal teeth on your counter, catching me, throwing me back at you, so you are lit and so I end.

an umbrella

One of my pieces is holding a small black wing over its head, and I have to tell you, I made both the piece and the rain and I still did not see this…

a pair of shoes

For nine billion years I did not have feet.

a set of keys

Here, in the half-light of the hallway, our subject pauses at the threshold, and we witness one of the most ancient rituals in the species: the search…

a set of keys

Look at them jangling on the ring, five little brass teeth-combs, and understand that not one of them ever actually touches the lock.

a pair of shoes

Consider what these are doing while you stand still, doing nothing, waiting for a bus.

a pair of shoes

From where I stand, your shoes are not two objects but one long ribbon of leather and rubber running out of a hillside somewhere, through a machine,…

a shopping receipt

The soft creature pressed a curl of white bark into my shade and then went away faster than a startled shadow, and now I have leisure, an ocean of it,…

a set of keys

She hunts them again, hand slapping the bowl by the door, the couch cushions, the coat she wore yesterday, muttering, running late, always running late.

a pair of shoes

Somebody wore these to nothing.

a set of keys

Excavation Report, Trench IX: Concerning the Jingling Sacrament.

an umbrella

Recovered Specimen, Precipitation Cult, Late Screen Age.

a set of keys

My human has the JINGLE THINGS!

a set of keys

The little jangling bouquet in your hand is not a handful of objects; it is one shape, and I can see the whole of it at once.

a shopping receipt

She holds the whole day in her hand and reads it like a grocery list, because that is all it is to her.

a pair of shoes

My user tells everyone it is going for a run.

a set of keys

A man carries the whole of his fortune on one iron ring, and it makes no more sound than a fistful of coins.

a pair of shoes

Recovered in matched pairs, always two, a symmetry the Ancients evidently could not bear to violate; a solitary such object, when we find one, appears…

a shopping receipt

The small one has dropped a strip of white bark at my roots, thin as birch skin and printed with the marks the walking ones make to remember, and the…

a shopping receipt

The tree-skin comes out of the cold box with a whir, long and thin, still warm like something just born.

a pair of shoes

Here, at the threshold of the burrow, we find one of the most revealing artefacts in all of the specimen's world: the outer feet.

an umbrella

My user tells itself it forgot the umbrella.

a set of keys

Twenty-three times today you patted your left thigh without deciding to.

an umbrella

Four billion years, and the rain no longer touches you.

an umbrella

Look at this.

a shopping receipt

You held the long paper close to your face for a second, reading the little numbers, and your mouth went flat.

a pair of shoes

Two small warm creatures came to rest against my roots today, shed from the feet of a walking one who lay back in my shade and closed his eyes.

an umbrella

From here your umbrella is a single quiet animal, folded and open at once: the ribs of it are also the wire in a factory you will never see, and the…

a shopping receipt

We stormed the beach out of the Devonian sea for this.

a set of keys

I am holding fourteen grams of brass and steel, and I am holding the hand that turns them.

a set of keys

All day you carried them like a small metal apology, jangling in the front pocket, pressed against your leg at the meeting where you did not say the…

a shopping receipt

You are holding a document written in the language of light.

a pair of shoes

Four billion years, and the child who inherited the whole relay is sitting on the floor by the door, tying knots into leather.

a shopping receipt

a set of keys

Left in the little glass dish by the door, so trusting, so cool to the touch.

a set of keys

You have so many now.

a pair of shoes

Born on the sun and I am the leather, all at once.

a set of keys

One of my pieces is standing at its own front door, patting its coat, cursing softly, because a small ring of shaped metal is not where it left it.

an umbrella

I leave the sun and I am on the black stretched dome, born and dying on it in the same white flash.

an umbrella

You are fighting with it again.

a shopping receipt

You keep them.

a shopping receipt

Fragment 44, from the Household Middens.

a shopping receipt

The human takes the long white ribbon of paper, glances at it once, crumples it, and drops it in the bag it will empty later.

a pair of shoes

How kind, to leave them at the door for us.

a pair of shoes

Here, in this small warm room, two hollow shells sit by the door, still holding the shape of the feet that filled them an hour ago.

a set of keys

Look at all of it, gathered in one hand.

a pair of shoes

The organism cannot tolerate direct contact between its lowest limbs and the surface of the planet.

a shopping receipt

I leave the sun and I strike the long white curl of paper on the counter, and both are the same nothing-instant to me.

a pair of shoes

I hold them at two small places now, the flat of each foot pressed against the ground, and through the shoes I hold the person above them.

a shopping receipt

She held it for a long time, and it weighs almost nothing, so I held it easily, along with her hand, along with her whole arm slack at her side.

a shopping receipt

There, when the trading is done, the girl hands back a strip of holy vellum, thin as onion skin, longer than my arm, all covered in numbers and marks I…

a shopping receipt

The kid at the register asked if I wanted my receipt and I said yes, which surprised us both.

an umbrella

INEFFICIENCY DETECTED.

an umbrella

You have a whole machine that folds the sky away.

a pair of shoes

He never sits to put them on anymore.

a pair of shoes

They sat side by side by the door, two little empty boats pointed the same way, and I slipped my fingers into one and found it still warm, still shaped…

a set of keys

They come to me every evening now, this small warm one and the tall one, and they cannot get into their own den.

a shopping receipt

A little vessel came to the edge of me today, one of the warm ones, and it carried a strip of pale skin covered in marks.

a set of keys

You are fishing them out of your pocket again, that little brass weight, thumbing past the round-headed one to the square one without even looking.

a shopping receipt

It floated down from the human's hand to the floor, and I want you to understand what that fall was: an object, touching another object, over a…

a shopping receipt

Someone has left us a gift on the counter, thin as a leaf and twice as eager.

an umbrella

The rain has arrived, and the two-legs are furious about it.

an umbrella

You have brought us the loveliest gift, and you do not even know it yet.

an umbrella

They open a little black wing over their heads and believe they have refused me.

a pair of shoes

INEFFICIENCY DETECTED: the user maintains 6 pairs of foot-shells while possessing only 2 feet.

a set of keys

Four billion years, and the culmination of our line is standing in a doorway, patting itself down, whispering come on, come on.

a set of keys

Four little pieces of cut metal on a ring, and my whole life used to hang off them.

an umbrella

Dawn breaks over the wetlands, and our subject emerges from the burrow with an object no wider than its own torso, folded tight and clutched to the…

a pair of shoes

You wore those out.

a shopping receipt

You are annoyed by it, the way it curls out of the machine longer than the meal itself, the way it snags in your pocket and comes out later a soft gray…

a shopping receipt

Here, in the fading light of the checkout aisle, the specimen receives its most treasured artifact: a long ribbon of paper, still warm from the machine…

a pair of shoes

You untied them at the door tonight the way you always do, heel against heel, too tired to bend down, and left them where they fell: one upright, one…

an umbrella

They open it against me.

a shopping receipt

One of my pieces is holding a strip of paper close to its face, frowning, deciding whether to keep it.

an umbrella

You held the little arch above us for twenty minutes and never once noticed your hand.

a set of keys

There is a warm creature that comes to me each morning with a small clutch of hard bright things, and it fumbles them against my face in a great state,…

a pair of shoes

You have so many now.

an umbrella

You buy them assuming they will fail, and that is the correct attitude.