the second hand

i spent my morning wrapped in nostalgia

music from another ear, another year

i pressed hard against the flesh of my past

i wondered how it survived it all, even though

it wasn’t all that bad

i saved all of my pieces, like a crumbled wall

a monument dismantled into storage boxes

that want to crush me when i pull them down

from a high and distant shelf. careful, i said. careful.

i also lost some things, things i don’t remember

so i sat beneath the scrutiny of the overhead lights

interrogated by the absence of those objects

i got drunk so on the mystery, i began to slur

today, more so than any day before,

i could tell you how quickly it is moving

how decades yawn closed when you blink

how weeks tumble as if launched from a steep hill

how the second hand scrapes when it passes

but instead i will only listen to life, its lonely orbit