The days like grains on grains don’t heap

– line removed for use in a different poem

Open onto morning like a blister,

biscuits of light covering either eye

like cucumbers in a cartoon spa, I turn to be

unable to see your blinded face for sun.

The mathematic edges of the calendar

solve into the number of how many towels

we can set to going dry on the bannister,

whether or not the cat’s saliva dropped 

like chaos into my coffee, its pattern of heat

coiling into my palms. 

If love is not 

enough, perhaps it is that every day

we wipe away each other’s gunky sleep

from the ampoule-shaped ducts of our eyes,

then take it in turns to do the same for the cat.