I waste the lost hours
playing games—in the fun
of distant worlds, and words framed
from disappointment, another hour ticks by.
My disease is framed, in a circle.
Two remote hands edge, a semaphore
to the knowing, ever closer,
now nearer now far apart.
My daughter cannot tell the time.
Cannot tell it, it doesn’t matter to her
that things divide into other things,
and then dissolve.
It doesn’t matter to her that photographs
are lost, and with them memories
as if it wasn’t all contained
internally, as if the brain had failed.
Is it an element then? Or an arbitrary
division of the moment, of anticipation
over before indulgence? Time;
convenience or torture,
dragging us onwards, admonishing,
with the wagging finger of electronics
or the old Grandfather,
monotonous, severe,
an heirloom of the family,
that ticks over arguments
and the door that closes
for the last time.