Shower drip, double Dutch jump rope
marks time when I have forgot time.
At 4 o’clock AM, all birds
are mocking birds.

Timid rays peek in through the blinds.
In the sun, an orchestra tunes
to the pitches of the morning
so quietly.

Now I mourn the demarcation
between the failed and the failing,
between the still and the moving.
Do I still move?

Still bodies lay hidden in rooms
while floorboards groan their ‘Good morning’s,
the static they produce in me
like petrichor.

My wretched core of nausea
stirs a haunted sigh from my bones,
floods me with a lover’s fullness
and emptiness.

Soon I hope to join the bodies
and feel the freshness of morning,
to open its spice cabinet
and breathe it in.