This is not my thesis.

I watch time
intersect with his hands
that are weathered, worn.
The fingers are heavy, and thick, a labour to lift
each one making a distinct click
words are loudly shaped to screen, lacking the melody behind
my own.

He's watching my hands, floating above the keys
and i watch his brow wrinkle at a new found inadequacy
the product of worlds suddenly so remote, where
participation is predicated on mastery of
magic that translates words to wires, to ping to life in the
purses of granddaughters
a million miles from where we sit.
The 25 min that pass on the journey from his hands to her smile
happy sweet 16, from grandpa, rings warm and sweet.

My smile secretly seeks to congratulate,
though I fear he'll only read condescension
for time has suddenly made me master
and left him him, mostly
lost.  

Body Clocks

Seven Sunday runners passed us by.

This, is how we kept time.

How I, kept time,

for tears flowed too quickly to be counted.

And I hurriedly erased them from view with the edge of my sleeve

so you wouldn’t see the truth behind my disguise:

that I wanted more than what was available to me -

Less sunsets, more sunrise.

That I was pretending, not to love, your lust.

The whole thing, felt useless anyway. 

So I watched the runners, keeping time –  it shouldn’t have taken so long

to end something that never started. 

That ring, never left your finger.

Above Rocks, Retirement

These are the places that time, forgot.

That history and memory etch into emerald canopies over mud floors.

Cast iron burns hotter, in dutch pots that wear scars as old as

Her hands and mine,

which after all this time, still cannot scrub as hard as

hers – so smoke smears and stains still remain

on dresses and drapes.

Breezes call me to gullies deep

so I follow nature’s litter.

Trails of coconut leaves and gourds –

empty caskets that we once drained in refuge from the relentless sun.

My childhood is repainted through eyes that remember

her hands, at work

and the time it takes to

turn nothing,

into something,

and her story

into my own. 

untitled

I'm sorry.
But it always rains here.
always.

And when it rains my glasses blur
and I can't see the faces of those
who pass my way.
And I know, that today
was meant to be 'special'
But I just couldn't see.

And I think I just let you walk right on past
everything that you dreamt 'we' could be
babies and birthdays and basketball games on sunny Sundays.
I'm sorry. But that's what happens
when it rains
and it always rains here.