Your Minutes

ZOE WEISS

​

I clench the minute hand between my fingers, calloused.

Do you hear them?

Ticking along the walls and pale corridors,
poised in the kitchen of my bare apartment,

beating on the dashboard, stained with coffee
clasping my wrists—with passing hours

collecting—no—stacking
fears
like
ammunition.

​

I maneuver my body—now adept—

between the crevices

of your judgment.

Chest tight and breathless-

I am a child, pulling the weight of a small human
from a pool of noise, squinting, ears plugged and painful—   

 

Reflected on the other side

I listen for you—emerging from those stifled sounds—into
the limbs and lungs of your ideal design.

​

We touch— fingers pressed to glass, again,
warm as if we’d just met…
   
and—I am suddenly self-conscious—
Ashamed.

​

I lower my head, flushed and urgent

I begin again to bury

the half formed and hurried grievances  
deep to the rising noise and wanting minutes.

​

I watch them sever our frozen palms, spilling around our feet.