Something Like Patience, Something Like Neglect

I dropped it reaching for a glass

and left it.

Two hours, maybe more.

The counter is that fake wood grain

that swells in moisture

because someone, years before me,

let water sit and didn't wipe.

By eleven it was just a small wet oval,

the size of a thumbnail.

I stood there and watched the last of it go.

I'm not sure what I was waiting for

to be over—

the ice, or the day, or the particular way

I keep finding myself

still in the room

when everything else

has gone somewhere else.