a room I've never slept in

the heavy ticking of a clock I can’t find

in a room I’ve never slept in before

echoing the sounds of the clock in my grandmother’s living room

a room I haven’t been in in over ten years

she doesn’t live there anymore

and the clock doesn’t work

but in the purity of the night time

I hear the ticking back and forth

and something heavy wraps its arms around me

the empty nothingness of being loved and far from home

my grandmother is asleep somewhere miles and miles away

maybe dreaming about me and maybe not

but as the seconds go by

weighed down by a nostalgic finality

I think maybe she is dreaming of me

and of the clock in her living room from ten years ago

if I think hard enough

or maybe soft enough

I am still in that room

still a child with a white carpet beneath my toes

and the chilly air from the porch brushing along my arms

I am a little girl counting the seconds

tracing the edges of photographs that live forever in a corner of my memory

light and warm

waiting for dinner

I am far from home

in a room I’ve never slept in

but as sleep starts to pull me under

I realize the thickness of the air surrounding me is not the tolling of an ending

but a beginning

a blissful, peaceful recognition of a past well-lived, and a future well-imagined 

2/2/24 11:14pm