sailors must have felt it
and mothers when old
the distance between the ache
and the way they chose to call it



starts at midnight and lasts
for hours on end
stretches and seeps
keeps the wooden rocking chair
heavy, leaded, frozen in a bubble

ties the dust
all the way to the window
under this tangled ply
poorly scattered, left to sag
for a decent permeation of pain



the minutes replicating
feeding on one another
make the room for rapture
when you remember