The Clockwork Aquarium
My shadow has decided
to go on vacation,
leaving me with a suit
made of wet paper
and a briefcase full of clocks
that chime backward.
I walk on the pavement
that melts like old wax,
trying to sell sunshine
to a man with mercury eyes.
The stairs in my house
are made of glass whispers.
I climb, but the attic keeps
retreating into the clouds.
My coffee cup is an aquarium,
where tiny, blue fish
swim in the sediment
and tell me to wait for a storm
that never washes.
I pull the solemn
curtain of the day,
but behind it is only
the same gray room
where gravity is just
a suggestion I cannot follow.
The mirror shows
a stranger with my hair
shaping my mouth into a smile
I haven’t learned yet.
I am wrestling with
a phantom made of sand.
Every time I grab him,
I only have less of myself.
The air tastes like
unwritten letters,
and my heart keeps ticking,
a tiny, stubborn metronome
in a world that has stopped singing.
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