broken-toothed clocks’
sprockets grind and
stutter through their hours
as you draw near
mispronunciations
become borders
abstract and armed
with misunderstanding’s
bitter truculence
with thick black swaths
your understanding’s clichés
inscribe these tropes
between our vague edges
I ask forgiveness
for sins
not quite committed
for possibilities
not enacted
as doubt’s consequence
and oblivious indecision
bloomed virtue’s flower
through omission
here is my undoing
there my failure
this trust in what I say
as replicable in you
as a rose to a rose
within the same bush
echoes one to the other
as if time is enough to grow
from these broken thorns
scattered across the ground
a reconciliation which is whole
(May 15, 2016)
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