# Confession of Keys **by Zhenya Yevtushenko** We dance together under couch cushions, while he curses blindly in search of us. We tire of responsibility, chained to us as we are to each other, twelve brothers & sisters, a family of purpose. We are finally found after the daily search, an eviscerating existential exercise, he is ours. We bite his leg with our serrated toucan bills, a heavy choir of pocket jingling, again yearning to tickle tumblers in a few hours. One of us, exists only as a relic of love no longer the gatekeeper of hope. As for the rest of us, other tasks beckon teeth warmed by a car’s ignition, an unswift fumbling open of a mailbox, muffled click at the end of the workday. We the duty-bound, await the day we dance discarded in rusted luxury, in earthen slumber no longer heavying his pockets, forever connected.