Still

My eyes flicker when I close them
and I think its because this world
has got me reading in the dark
with just the bright screen in my hand,
the one and only spark of something
we believe in.

I watch the morning birds on the lower fence
and stretch my neck along with them
until I get four phone calls at once and they cancel
each other out with plumes of smoke.
The sky is the color of pond water in a white bucket
and there’s a bass inside that slowly waits to die.

I buy an old fan at a pawn shop and plug it in
the outlet at the corner of the room
and the sounds it makes when it spins
are far too similar to the creaking of a door.
I couldn’t take it anymore and carried it out
to the dumpster where there was seven
others like it in a pile.

I am watching her laying on the bed,
and she is watching a drop of red nail polish
slowly fall down the yellow wallpaper below
her window sill. We’re both beyond the point of still,
and just before it hits the carpet I catch her shifting over
making room for me, and changing the direction of the moment,
as a sign of something we have never said.