I wish I could explain

I wish I could explain
How hard it is to leave

Your brow a rope of fireplace brick
Your cheeks an avalanche on stilts

The days will add up
To something like fourteen thousand

Times ten to the nine
Multiplied by eight or something

That's when everyone in your world
Will feel like containers of lukewarm soup

Different than hands leaving suspension
Body making cannonball for plunge

Like switching favorite colors
From brown to red

A big red X crossing off the sleeps
That stand between us

Finally crossing them all off
Then remembering what Wednesdays are like

The cycle of all Wednesdays combined
Until the end, minus vacations

There are weekends to take for granted
Where the clock hides under twigs and ice

But those moments in front of the fire
A glowing web of embers losing weight

While everything else gets counted
We get more from what slowly disappears

We make glass in there
Time and heat, then fizzle and steam

Things we can hold and observe
See into, break easily
--
3.27.13