screen time

I was a name, I was
a hand, I was a night
lit with candles and
braided by the rain—
now a chair, now a lamp,
now a number circled
on a calendar, a number
on the face of a clock—
there’s no point in asking
what comes next.
Things never are better

for long. The truth is
there and that’s a fact,
the drawn card, the eventual
settle of the tumbling dice,
the number that tells you
your number’s up.
The test results or
the unyielding tree
you’re wrapped around,
the tenses eventually stuck
in reverse, life another love

that left, now an old man
smoking on the porch as
the train wails by, now
the worn through soles
years of slow circles,
grinding out the ghost
given up so long ago
the words aren’t left and
the music got lost in
transcription. The night
another stranger closing in.