Home is the passage of time in thin sheets of slow cadence,
So in theory, all clocks will run forever
like your family dog in the backyard across acres of land.
Digital watch I gave you scratched up doing yard work
with a saw.
A saw –
this is how to use a circular saw.
When we bought that wood and set out
and you ended up dropping it, a half slice through the finger, nothing major, but nothing minor either, six stitches and a bill you’d never pay.
Your old man’s truck in the rural mountains, some field owned by someone’s cousin, and we scooped dirt up for six hours and went home
for a skill exchange:
electric drill for algebra,
and prepositions for Phillips screws.
In November I gave you six books, and you read them all and circled the unknown words,
did it smell the same?
Wrapped in your coat back when curls were hazel
no clean buzzcut,
juvenile
with TV dinners and cold winters and snow-swallowed cars.
Maps made of paper gridded like your flannel with a hole while hunting season came and went. And that fawn turned back to you,
last crunch of the snow,
thumb drawn to the trigger of silence.
