Thirty-Five Thousand Hours
Poem
Thirty-five thousand hours of loss,
counted as I tilled soil, gathered, and sowed
seeds of your memory.
Under this drought sun, still, I planted,
watered you with geometric dew,
let you grow beyond reach,
tower above my headstone,
twist your vines into an epitaph —
the sacred invocation that turns the lock
to my existence beyond.
Am I gone, or was it you?
They say the soul wears the body —
a mantle it discards once death tires of life.
My body is but tatters in your absence,
the specter that shepherds it is lost.
Can the flock bring it back — those drudgeries,
twelve eternal labors, and Saturn Returns of my life?
Or will it continue the count without you,
Thirty-five thousand and one,
complete in my incompleteness.
When I write poems like this one, I always prefer to end them on a positive note — not out of a need for forced positivity, but because it reflects who I am at my core…
