not a road.                                                                         bend it, touch it, let it pool in your palm 
and remember that we can only pretend to flatten the spiral into an eight by eleven page calendar pinned on the wall. 

time is a puddle

call it order
call it progress
call it next month,
but the vastness spills over the edges. 
I think there's a deep comfort that can be found in the wholeness of time, comfort in knowing absence has texture, erasure leaves a grove, nothing is lost here - 
there is so much to be found in the quiet geography of persistence,     of refusal. 
poem by nicole slattery (2025)