I’ve already told you everything.
The wind-up clock’s face won’t break,
and you’ve taken my hammer and all my tools,
and walked backwards out the door,
the metal sliding and clanging in your black back pack.
I chipped the beige paint off too,
ground my fingernails down to soft jagged saws,
the clock now black-speckled and deflective silver.
When I threw the clock against the wall,
the old wood dented into
a shallow shape of closed lips,
leaving only a scratch across the clock’s forehead.
I won’t throw it out because
I’ll be able to hear it tick in the junkyard
under yellow plastic wrap and green gum;
I won’t be able to wind it up again.

I rock in the chair to the rattle of the clock on the window sill,
listening to your car ten stories down.
Orange streetlights begin flicking on,
lacquering the ground in quiet yellow-copper shades one by one.
I press my face against the glass.
“I will drop it out the window when it slows down this time,”
I say and lean back, folding my hands.

© 2008 by Katie Hoffman. All rights reserved.