I tugged and pulled at the landing and stairs carpet,

threadbare, its fabric skin, hanging loosely

and unsurprisingly

it gave way easily, knowing its time was short,

revealing trapped dust of a decade’s footsteps,

up and down, occasionally falling, tumbling,

broken neck avoided by short distance

between point a and b…

The remains swept up, cleaned down,

 a vacation in a vacuum and then in the bin,

to live and decompose in a thousand years

in plastic sweat, much like the carpet I had