Grasping Moments

Four
You watch the dead TV set to a faint buzzing from above. The TV is yours, the couch is yours, closet, blankets, specters, cabinet—yours. Books that fill the shelves that fill the walls around the room, your spectators arranged in a coliseum. Your air, I couldn’t breathe—couldn’t hold mine.

Three
My mouth opens and your words drift out. I prepared them on your time. The words shock your air—it parts then collapses into itself. The smell of cigarette smoke, salt, and dust from removal, lingering premonitions like absence itself, like disappearance from yours.

Two
The paint looks paler, as if the walls could remember four minutes before, when I was yours without four minutes of my own. A second passes and someone laughs, close enough to crowd your space, clear enough to cringe. I exit your silence, your door. Your shadows on the curtains.

One
Outside the air is mine, the weight is mine. For four minutes I possess the icy pavement, the corner where I wait. Your smell will fade in four weeks; almost nothing yours remains. Four weeks of mine is enough for now.

Zero