Crust

[hardvice]

Like hollow curls of outside baked dry
and stiff with age still bearing the
semblance of what once was like the
randomly discarded carapace of some insect
seeming more cicada perhaps than the
shellless cicada that emerged and fled
leaving behind its self-shaped relic like
a dental mold defining a former presence
in absence like all of these I sit here
taking up negative space, instantly
recognisable it is true but nevertheless
not the same, hollowed out and left
to mock the past until the future sees
fit to end the charade and grind
this crust to dust.