Quiet room squeezes me breathless, I scrape and I gouge, absentmindedly reaching for splinters to pull from beneath my paper bark. A year of quiet rooms, clocks ticking, leaves its mark — One thousand fading scars, this shawl clings tightly against my branches, my trunk. My softness, the sapwood, is thick-ringed, Comfort to a woodpecker who visits me. Less a friend, but always a familiar face: unwelcome guest of inopportune times.