Prayer Shawls for Soulless Things

I’ve been wrapping sticks in string
Almost longer than anything else.
I don’t think I even breathe like I did,
When I was just starting out.
My heart is a gentle woodclack, now.
When I first learned it was all metal.
When a machine learns,
All it does is make and make and
Keep pulling at the air
Where the thread just happens to be.
It’s the motion, regardless
Of outcome. Chrome doesn’t get cold, just
Smaller.
Thirsty for oil.

The string’s not even secondary.
My nervous spirals pulled so many
Soft things into being, then threw them
Off like woodchips.
The humans keep asking, keep baring
Their delicate ribs. You can see how
An object engineered to take and spit
Might assume they just got eaten up,
Once they left my dimlit factory floor.

Half a decade later, new resin eyes
Recognize an old shape. These veneers never
Touched it, but the muscles and servos
Remember. These soft things I made
Life on, and so do the hands
That greased the wheels,
Now clothed and warm and
Remembering metal–
Remembering me?

I look around my workshop, now,
Dead forest stripped of the sentimental,
And the full shelves feel empty, fragile
Like new skin.