Raspberries taste too much like
summer afternoons spent with
you and him and her and it’s been
one thousand and twenty two days
since I knew that you had a body,
one hundred and forty six weeks
since I last heard your footsteps
on the wood above my head and it’s been
twenty four thousand, five hundred and eight
hours since I last felt your smile on the bare
backs of my shoulders. I’ve been keeping
time using fish scales, my own scales,
etching numbers into flesh with broken
finger bones, vertebrae— sometimes I wonder
if it’ll ever be okay and sometimes I think
maybe it will be but then I remember that it’s been
one million, four hundred and seventy one thousand,
six hundred and eighty minutes since you last
called my name from down the hall and it’s been
eight eight billion, three hundred thousand,
eight hundred seconds without you, breathing, and I’m
forgetting how because you were my oxygen and I only ever
treated you as if you were the acid that spilled out of your
eyes when you were upset, when you were not yourself, when you
were sick— you were sick. I’ve spent two years, nine months, and
eighteen days, excluding today, lying to myself
and waiting for you
to come home.