Napo 18

My brain fog is gone, thanks to some vitamins, some caffeine, and a run. So I was able to come back to write another poem draft to catch up a little. Yesterday's prompt was to make the abstract feeling of grief concrete. I really haven't experienced profound grief, but B has.

The Gold Watch

I don’t know when the gold watch stopped—

It sits, tucked into the darkness of the cupboard,

No longer catching the rays of sunlight,

Telling him the time,

Or clanking on the dinner table

As he ate his dinner. Once, its face looked up,

Met the curious eyes, or the worried eyes

On a Monday afternoon, or the languid eyes

On a Sunday morning, or the tired, bloodshot eyes

After one too many martinis. Now it collects dust.

The time reads 7:56. I wonder if it stopped

In the morning, or in the evening, it’s gold hands

Showing the way cryptically. I wonder if the gold watch

Felt the moment the pulse

Stopped.

I wonder if this gold watch went cold,

how it felt to feel the heat of that old man’s body

escape from it for the last time.

I wonder who removed it from the limp wrist with care.

He was buried with a naked wrist,

a wrist I never saw naked.

I didn’t have the courage to touch the cold hand

or even look down at that wrist without a watch,

because time becomes irrelevant to the dead,

But to us, the living, it means everything.

His heart stopped. The watch kept ticking for awhile,

As if to urge you to go on, too. But even watches die

Without care. And somehow, that watch

Ended up in your pocket, warmed by your palm

After the funeral, but you never could let it embrace

Your wrist. Your wrist is so much smaller than his was,

I know. You tucked that gold watch away

into the bathroom cupboard with the expired medication,

cotton balls, a sealed pregnancy test. Grief is

The dead gold watch you never wear.