the invention of time

Staring at the crossword’s blank boxes,
forehead cooled against the train window
while black bordered droplets
trail a little farther into the recent past.
Rice fields flecked with egrets,
the tensile strength of memory
dragging that press of self
down the narrow corridor,
the clatter of the tracks, the buckled
cabins rolling with such certainty.
Closing eyes and the words won’t come,
a couple arguing just out of earshot,
voices trailing like tears in a dark room,
falling stars burning scars over the horizon.
This noise, this glass-- reminders
the world is not made from metaphor.
Events suspended between
some things that happened and
the words that will bind them to this life.