Ten Past Ten

The dial holds its quiet face

open to whatever light remains.

Ten past ten—the hands resting

in that deliberate balance,

neither climbing nor falling,

as if time itself had paused

to study the symmetry of wanting.

Inside the case, the movement keeps

its patient, private work:

wheels turning against the dark,

each tick a small insistence

that something continues

even when the body is still.

I have become a complication—

extra function layered over the simple hours,

a calendar of absences,

a moon-phase of almost,

the second you left still circling

the same fixed point.

Sapphire crystal keeps the world

from pressing too hard against the glass.

I watch the hands through it,

watch them lean into that infinite trek around the axis

as though the hour and minute had finally learned

how to hold itself without breaking.

Winding works only to make it permanent—

Rotation across the skin of the day,

a map of where the yearning lives

when the movement slows

and the time feels heavier

than any distance should.

Still the hands return

to that balanced place again and again,

as if love were nothing more

than the quiet decision

to keep showing up

at the time where love is always there at a glance.