What can we do when this work that we hate is all we have between
us, you, who I desire, with whom all I can speak of to you is a stain spreading
between your life and mine and not whatever is beyond the firewalls, the canyons
of ice in which we count these hours
you say who counts these hours, whose attention winds like a golden thread
through the eyelets of each wind filled moment of each
day–looking at regional and national bags of chips floating on the
shelves of CVS while your prescription gets filled, drowsy scrolling,
thinking, perhaps, you will finally glimpse the engine between
its permutations, how someone tells you no they cannot put that small
but persistent fire out, how you’ve learned to no longer feel this
as devastation
you say who counts these hours and I do not know, I do
not think anyone counts these hours, we all just know each other’s
lives are mostly lost to the fact that each day
they start over, down similar paths, we know this
that whatever we are can’t be counted, is inexplicable and strange
[This poem originally appeared in Hall’s collection Fugue and Strike, published in 2023 by Black Ocean Press.]
