For the love of gloves

I am turning into one of them
They have commandeered my hands
Already the colour is rushing out of me
I am holding on for my dear cliched life
The shadows under my eyes are running
The man on the wall looks on without blinking
I look away from him without thinking
Now I am all softly stitched kid leather
folded on a table top       but free at last
of the hammered-in gloves
their oranges       blues and yellows
Covering cracks in the walls they tremble a bit
as they sing like a flock of canaries