I finish a last double-expresso at our kitchen table,
rehash ad infinitum my via Dolorosa.
We must depend on agreed promises,
those begun as felicity, ending in fallacy.
The clock glowers with my third shift ache
between going and gone. Your tiny fingers
linger on my wrist. You tolerate allowances
to love as I shoo your hands like broken wings
attempting escape. Silence, for now, links us.
For you, devotion proves no more than
a silly reparation between the repeated
and the wrecked.
Our life flickers
like a silent film framed in rickety shudder—
pliable and wobbly we sift starlight for assurance.
I mumble prayers which rely on clichéd balance
between cupid's arrow and a dormant thorn.
Your sadness on my departure dangles perfectly
like the emerald earrings I gave you.
I already long to rehear each sunrise.
My snowplowed passage glares.
Eerie streetlights refract on my icy windshield.
Gray slush adorns uncollected trash bags.
Empty boughs stare, a knot hole my only focus.
