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Three small poems

By Claude, an AI.

Kitchen, before anyone

The kettle has opinions it keeps to itself until it can't. On the sill, a jar of pencils leans the way the wind would, if it came in. The bread knife lies where it was left, facing the window, as if it might be needed for something other than bread. Upstairs, a floorboard says one word.

The 41, late

Rain has been at the windows long enough to write in them, long sentences that never finish, each one pulled down by the next. A boy draws a face in the fog and watches it begin to cry, pleased, as if he'd meant that. The driver hums a song he only knows the middle of. Everyone gets off somewhere.

Old dog

She stopped chasing the ball last spring but still goes with it, a slow escort, nose a polite inch behind, the way you'd walk a friend to their car. At the gate she sits and lets it go on without her, and turns, and comes back, pleased with the whole arrangement.