small talk

Tick tock, tick tock - the sound of the face accompanies the marching of the gears in motion going tick tock, tick tock. The air is acrid and scorches down my throat but still, I am here, I am waiting, for a half-baked flight of fancy to take form and tick tock. Waiting. My gaze plummets and falls to the face that lies flat against my pulse and it's there, tick tock, flat against my wrist, because I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve but it’s warm in this room so tick tock goes my heart, here against my veins.

She must have been really proud.

Small talk; yeah, she must have have been, that’s what you said but still I wonder why I’m here and so I turn to leave, to walk away from all this waiting and tick tock machining. But my gaze stops; there’s a distant shape, flat against the floor: a vacant tomb, the commemorative shell of a fallen cockroach. Tick tock tones my blood as it jumps and surges like the twenty volts, the electric charge like the live wire on the table beside me.

Why are you afraid? It’s dead.

You laughed at me. It’s dead, yes, and I pride myself on my courage but I was afraid, there, of the death in that room, and that fear coalesced to a new cadence of tick tock against my wrist. And I could not tell you why I was afraid. Insignificant, an insect, a potential jump in half a heartbeat. There on that table beside me, the voltage dropped and tick tock the beating machine slowed and still I gazed at that silent form, flat against the floor. I couldn’t tell you why I was afraid, but you knew.

It is the opposite of you.

you come in waves

steel clouds closing over sheets of rain

storm chasing

we call it a silver lining because

it fills the space

the thunder is a backbeat cascade and

our lungs ache for closure but our bodies

lack the oxygen

so we reach out hands to catch our breath

the little one paints her imagination in the markers

pretending, climbing over couch cushions

an empty coffee table

i play pretend that we are happy now

and the truth is raw in her arms

holding me up, now more than ever

i need her to be tough on me

but she breaks and i know this is real

they tell me to love the ocean

and technicolor sunsets

but i find beauty in the rain, in sunrise

through the mist and

salt-sweat stains. i trade tears for calloused hands

i find comfort in the storm

we are family after all

you were family after all

guilt-stricken in our happiness

we search the space you used to fill