9:42am

When I think about that day
that day when things in life are better
and you’re with me
but not really with me. And I’m alone for five minutes
but altogether filled up in a new place,
a new place in mind
a different street in a different city
a different glow from the streetlights
a different laugh heard across the street
from a different person. Someone I don’t know. The snow falls desperately
from the sky. I am here now.
And I don’t get sad or tremble.
I pull my ungloved fingers out of my pocket
and grab my collar and take a few steps
away from lit the doorway
out into the cold snowy sidewalk
I feel the burn of frozen slush around my boots.
I slip and remember the way coffee sits on your lips
I look down to the footsteps in the wet sidewalk.
I slip again and remember your knit cap pulled down
over your eyes and foolish grin. I slip one more time to a mess of laundry
on the floor and nearly lose my balance. Then I reappear
And return home to some apartment
on some 43^rd and Juniper Street while the snow hugs the bricks
and the pavement teases my footsteps and my scarf murders my breath.
I slip every now and again. I go back on the clock like it isn’t true,
and everyday was yours and mine, and I reappear again, eyes wide open
even today, and it hasn’t reached 10 am. My days, my days, my days… where are they alive.