Wrist Deep

VI

There are few things to count, days for one,
also months, eventually years as they go
and become smaller, less significant.
Somehow, yesterday, the microwave on the fritz
started beeping off the minutes. Beep, another

minute of your life is over, beep, another minute,
beep, beep, beep (we woke to the alarm counting
off the time we’d agreed to wake, shook our bodies
out of sleep and thought of only how cold it was
beyond the comfort of sleep. I used to sleep with you then.

I used to sleep well with you then. So many times
I lost track. You were the unperceivable, the shadow
in the corner I’ve felt upon waking for years now.
You were the ghost in the old house, the crack
making its way up the windshield, the sound

that puts a doubt in the fact that we are awake.)
Awake, awake, awake, and it is bursting daytime,
bustling nightlife setting itself into the concrete seams
of the sidewalk and I am walking, a bit of something
lodged that keeps me in kilter, something a bit like glue.

I scrape, at last, the final pebble from my shoe
as the dark eyed owl spreads his down, filling slow
the gutters, and begin to feel lighter, so he can soar
for solitary hours; and this, my single wish,
alone, disheveled, spry, somewhat diminished.