Tuesday

You rise, heat the water for coffee 

and stretch your sore arms. Outside,

the neighbor’s cat saunters through the garden,

men work the wet yard. It has been raining 

for weeks. You must now go out into the world.

It darkens a little, the sky overhead. 

This day, like all others, is not unlike 

heartbreak. The woman you love isn’t there.

No remedy.			You shouldn’t 

want that anyway. At work you’re busy 

complicating the materials and 

operating within narrow windows 

in the early phase of a new series. 

Your square plaster panels fracture 

when pressed by their inset nails 

into drywall. It's a kind of self-

encounter, filling the seam, 

plaster forming a smooth raised plane 

along the former fissure, thinking only of  

conquest,		 abundance. 

You pause, eat something small and resume 

again—it's like entering a warm bath

if you could bathe in a box. But

that moment you discerned a hunger 

and reached for the thing that would satisfy—

without thinking—all gestures are made

of this one		gesture—

a whole life, stirring—		fluid

like cream, 		becoming warm,

then solid, 		brittle.