A clock is ticking in the room
where I fall asleep with my son,
but the clock the one by my grandpa’s
orange house bike — in a time before Peloton.
And the A/C drips onto the courtyard below,
and the clothing wafts gently, hung up on the line,
while my grandma’s soft humming
makes its way to my game with lost dolls.
“He was my daddy”- she says of the man on the bike.
A picture both real and imagined in grey and white.
In the basket, a baby with my little one’s face,
but how can that be? I am myself still a child.
And on the brown sofa sits a woman,
curly-haired and carefree, before
the dye and the chemicals-
and a baby born yellow.
But that baby is in med school,
and the woman has gone -
and the clock is still ticking
in the room where she slept.
The smell of potato- boring to most,
is a jolt back to the days
before lines on our faces — the days
where we lingered-
and laughed.
These are the good ol’ days
for the children we raise -
the days before we know
of illness
of dying
of what happens beyond.
The clocks are still ticking
in the rooms that we’ve left -
homes where we played,
where we knew love -
or hurt.
Somewhere a child lays in
what was once a home
and now is in darkness
and that clock is still ticking
in blueprints gathering dust.
