No Pattern

The radiator ticks.

Three seconds.

Eight.

I've been counting since two a.m.,

lying here with the ceiling doing nothing above me,

building a sequence out of the intervals

the way you'd build a shelf

from whatever lumber's lying around—

it holds for a few rounds,

then one number comes

and the whole thing falls.

Three, three, eight, three—

then eleven.

Eleven wrecks it.

I know the ceiling.

The bubble in the paint near the window trim.

The brown ring from something

that leaked before I was here.

Tick.

I thought it stopped once.

Thirty seconds, maybe longer.

I lay there waiting the way you wait

after a light changes,

just to make sure the cars

are actually stopping.

Then it went again.

Four-eighteen.

I know the time the way I know the ceiling:

without having to look.