Unmarked

The dial on the wall goes blue to red

with nothing marked between—

no numbers, no hash lines, just a spread

of color, faded and unclean

from everyone's thumb. I turn it right

a notch each afternoon.

Nobody shivers. Nothing feels more right.

Nothing changes. Not late, not soon.

Danielle asked yesterday—

does anyone know what that dial does?

The room went quiet in a way

that sounded like the lot of us

confessing something. I've been turning

another unmarked thing for months,

texting, calling, slowly learning

the distance between response and once,

between the blue end and the red.

The room stays the temperature it is.

I turn it anyway, a half-thread,

and wait for proof that it's

connected to anything at all.