"Mechanics of the Late Hours"

It’s gonna be a long night, dividing this labour.
The clock on the partition wall lacks a second hand,
yet the minutes drop like lead weights
into carpeted silence.

Gonna be some sweet sounds.
We say it like a pact, or a threat against the dark.
You were talking to me just the other day,
or maybe it was twenty years ago, before the ink dried,
before the radiator began its rhythmic, metal cough.
I bet you're singing.
I bet the ceiling doesn’t press down on you there.

There is a precise geometry to the nightshift:
the angle of the desk lamp, the cold tea;
your love lifted us becomes a mechanical lever
— a routine pull against the fuses

— rather than a sudden grace.

Gonna miss you, man.
The phrase falls out of the locker, unprompted,
a piece of stray lint in the machinery of mourning.
You always sang it in morning's broken voice,
but here, under the fluorescent tubes,
the grief is perfectly flat,
and infinitely wide.

.