Posted in Rituals

Incontestable

Posted on by tq1695

I lie in bed,
wait by the bathroom sink
or stand in the kitchen,
while my mother gets the thermometer.

Hope is coiled, a dog waiting to catch a biscuit,
or air
I’m halfway there
but
the thermometer’s authority is infallible
no alibi,
or testimony irrefutable to its veto.

Time breathes
“okay pop this under your tongue,”
Time holds its breath
damn – a normal reading bins the chance of day off school.

Advertisement

Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.