another sunday finds me unsettled,
time is a treadmill and i am
hopelessly out of rhythm,
steady my breaths and beg
my heartbeat to find me,
meet me where i’ve wandered

there are tally marks etched
into both sides of the scoreboard,
even the wins come at a
cost, the losses staining
my palms, purple grief,
a hundred debts to settle, broken
stories, walls abandoned halfway
through the paint

on the worst days my love
feels like an old pail with a
sprung leak, this heart and its
monstrous need, and who
can really see beyond what
they wanted, and when’s the
moment to say deal, i
can settle for this

the dust from the boys we were
settles on the edges we
forget to keep up with,
staining our fingertips gray,
smudging our best efforts,
drawing a line where we’ve
already drawn lines, and
our stories fall casualty to
the reckless blur