So often we wish for the workday to end.
To blink up at the unyielding clock
and be home

The afternoon incites a smile,
the morning, a groan

What we don’t realize in these moments
where we will the clock to move
is that it’s not just our shift we are asking to pass us by.
It’s easy to forget that we’re there
five days a week
9 hours a day, sometimes more.
That when we get home we’re tired.
That all the time we do have to ourselves
moves quickly, too,
no matter what pieces of it we are able to
hold onto in the moments that matter more.

Our children’s hair is longer
—It will only keep growing
Our parent’s skin is thinner, than it used to be
—the grooves of their eyes can only get deeper,
as will your own

And yet we beg time to move us,
we thrust fuel into the already
speeding engine of our lives and once it has momentum it does not slow for the gaps between.

The tide, for us, is always coming in.
How much time will you offer up?
How much shoreline will you give away
to the sea

you can look into the mirror and say
“these are all the different people I was today,”
so you can move your hands over your chest
and hear them reply,
“but this is the only one you ever need to be”

I am at your doorstep
flowers in my hands like foreign things,
I don’t know why I’ve got them but the air is
tight, my pulse loud,
and you answer, as if you hear its knocking.
You’re far away but if I tilt my head and squint, I think
I see you smile
and my heart rises

like the heat in summer
like the balloons that leave our hands when we are young

And then I wake

I would open the door and show you in,
Here are all my greatest weaknesses, I’d tell you,
right here in the foyer so mind your step.
The stress cracks in the stone are starting to show but the structure holds the same as it always has,
I assure you. Sometimes the wind sneaks in through the back window, to the left of all the things I’ve been through, and some days its refreshing but other times it’s the reason these doors don’t always hang right on their hinges. Please forgive me for the cobwebs by the stairs. It’s been a while since I’ve looked but now that you’ve arrived I’m realizing how long it’s been
since I last took care of them.

The basement is a wild place and I don’t suggest heading there, but if you must, please know that my heart takes up most of the space and that my thoughts are known to form all manner of shapes in the dark. Some of them are beautiful and some of them are ugly, but all of them are me.

How boring that would be,
a life without adversity

I wouldn’t trade the events of my life
for all the fantasies this reality has to offer

Like a strike to flint yields flame
it is our experiences that spark into creation
the people we come to be

If only we could lie within our own chests, looking up,
watching with distant eyes the shapes that drift there

I’d see the shape of a closed window and a light that won’t turn back on

I’d see the shape of a man with a child on his shoulders as they comb the beach in the throes of a storm

the shapes of anchored, restless boats that long for open water

a sunlit pier off which feet dangle and the drips of popsicles cascade into the sea,

and I’d see you