My first move, every morning, is a flinch.
An irritated recoil, against the noise of my alarm clock.
(Who the hell invented the alarm clock? Too ashamed to show his face?
Understandable.)
No matter what I ask of it,
This particular clock plays only feedback-spiked fragments
Of televangelist tunes that become lodged in my flypaper brain.

And I sing them in the shower.
Reams of sunlight cutting through the tiny bathroom window,
Catching otherwise invisible motes of dust—
My aurora borealis.

But, later, it is gone. Vanished. Like I never even had it.

Who knows what it is?
Is it the daily pinch of that troublesome vein;
The dirge of every heartbeat I forget to count?
Is it the notion I ought to be counting them?
It is grief—premature suffering. Too eternal, already.
It—this elusive, ever-changing it—is a storm. A vessel.
Back to a vein. Blood. Heritage. Footprints. Filling them. Finding them.
Sleep. Insomnia. Pills. Handfuls of them. Not trusting myself to not—
Not swallow; not jump; not fold.
Fold. Crease. Wrinkles. Age. Time.

Back to a clock.

Amazing effing grace.