The hospital plastic chair has a way

The hospital plastic chair has a way

of making your spine feel like a debt.

I’m holding six pounds of brand new clay

and trying to remember how to forget

the way the world is sharp and loud.

Your skull isn’t even a finished thing yet,

just a pulse in a gap, a little cloud

under skin so thin it’s a safety net.

You closed your hand around my thumb

and suddenly I owe you forty years.

I’m sitting here feeling entirely numb

while the nurse comes in to check your ears.