13 Ways to Look At Clocks

1.
The clocks are jumping off the walls
and stilling the minutes. I catch them.

2.
I sometimes used to think in terms of years.
I was small.
I was of the age where my bones were quite visible
peeking under the fair and thin skin I was given.

3.
The years do not turn back to look at me as they go.
They never say goodbye, as if I do not matter at all.

4.
I grow tired of standing on
the same egg.
I grow wary of falling into
the yolk.

5.
How can I wake everyday,
wipe the calm from the corners of my eyes,
and go on like nothing happened at all the night before?

6.
A picture fades around it’s edge.
But it isn’t serrated,
just unkempt.
I seem to like it better that way.
It does scare me, though.

7.
My skin, once fair and thin,
is creasing.
I do not look the same woman,
the same girl with light.

8.
You never see the same sky twice.

9.
Belonging to you was the best part.
I tried to go back but sometimes,
as you know,
one finds their own feet stuck to the cherrywood by sap.
(it doesn’t care about what one needs to do)

10.
“Do you ever notice your surroundings?” she asked.
“All the time.”
She didn’t know that I really meant it.

11.
You would be discreet and
check the time, not realizing
ten years had gone by.

12.
That picture I ripped in half
really hurt you.
I could tell.
That was back when I didn’t care.

13.
Sometimes it’s hard to understand.
I stole the minute hand and it’s brother off the clock,
but it did nothing.
There is proof everywhere.
I wish I couldn’t see it.