Time is thick, its thighs impossible to part.
Days are numbers, little spots
on calendars your mind won't track.
Three square meals defined by
what you'll pour from bottles,
any kind with leaving proof.
You think you're coy. Pasting shades
across deep sockets of your eyes.
As if you can cram moldy years
into margarine tubs, snap their lids
the way a woman learns
to stretch a meal into eternity.

Those suffer scraps have earned
nice plates and napkin rings
and gentle listen parsley sprigs.
A spritz of reciprocity from children
you have borne and grown and harvested
like rows and rows of yellow corn.
Behind gray glass are smoking signals
wafting through the kitchen nook.
I want to strip and stomp and crush
adages of cover-ups,
but words are such illegal drugs.
The ones you take are sadly not.

Everest of hidden grief so tucked away
it doesn't drain the batteries
of Father's precious black remote.
Zeroed in on putting greens and headline news--
when velvet guts of agony
belong to X-rays under light.
You speak of simple suicide.
My father thinks you're just a Joker
playing with a set of cards,
crying wolf by baring teeth.
Tears have earned lamenting songs,
but as it stands, stay letters
hands will never send.