Tell a stranger about your day
To the one who does not know my name:
My hours are currently a cracked earth,
a garden where the plants have gone stiff
and the clouds are only passing rumors.
I wake to a sun that asks too much,
my morning coffee dark and bitter
in a kitchen where the dust settles.
I move through the rooms
like a gardener checking the stems—
everything is brittle, everything is gold-brown,
hissing like a dry paper as the wind passes.