PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The clockwork stammers at the entry line.

I take the hammer to the iron year

and strike the hinge before the shadow falls.

If I can reach the room before the news,

before the floorboards buckle under weight,

I un-invent the letter and the phone.

I step into the quiet, pre-dawn hall

and pull the spark-plug from the rusting car.

The tires stay filled; the gravel goes untouched.

Because you never leave, you never crash.

Because you never crash, I do not spend

a decade staring at a static screen.

And since I do not sit alone in dust,

I never learn to weave this grief to thread.

I never buy the notebook or the ink.

I do not write the first line of this verse.

My hand drops limp; the page remains unlit.

The hammer dissolves back into the dark.

And if the page is blank, I was not here.

And if I was not here, the car will turn.

The shadow falls again across the gate.

The quiet comes. The loop has closed its jaw.

The grief was spoken, then revoked by law.