Every day is a finger, every week is a fist.
Friday is the devilâs day, the devil is a day sleeper.
Iâm counting down to see you.
If youâre reading this, Iâm talking to you.
No need to figure out the you in this calendar.
Hear my voice in your ears.
I hear yours.
Light a candle for dancing, watch shadows on the wall.
Shadowbox in preparation, you are concrete ballet.
I am concrete ballet.
My hands are cinderblock, my feet are clouds.
Are you marking the days.
Mark the weeks with an X.
Iâve tattooed an X on my arm.
Youâve tattooed my name on your hand.
I am grasping your arm.
I donât feel it, do you feel it.
Each tooth is a tombstone, both eyes are a fuse.
My body is a calendar, your body is a calendar.
Monday is a new Monday, but you saw that coming.
I didnât.
Weâre wrapping in a circle, a loop of a piercing.
You are my earring, and you are my ear.
We are dancing.
Robert Krut is the author of The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (Codhill/SUNY Press 2019), which received the Codhill Poetry Award, This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books 2013), and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox 2009). He teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lives in Los Angeles.
Image: “Trademark” by Jonathan Silverman
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