The oven might be wrong.
His cell phone's rarely used so not much help.
"What time is it?" he asks her as he interrupts her work.
"You have a watch," she says, a bit annoyed. "I gave it to you, so..."
"It doesn't work," he says.
And there it is.
The silent implication that the problem is with her
and not the watch at all. Her gift has stopped.
Her patience and her love, her willingness to free this moment
now, this broken watch of wanting anything from life.
The cue is obvious. He waits for her to offer, get the battery it needs,
a simple act of service that she's done before.
Today she just feels done. The deeper issue's not the watch
or expectations but the wish that all the things around her
in a current state of disrepair (no pun intended)
could so easily be put to rights.
A battery for that one's motivation.
And another that can fix such grave mistakes.
The nation's ills, injustice. She can't just run down to the store
and pick up something that will put these back on track.
Instead she could just run. An hour later she is back, the battery in hand.
So much of life she cannot fix,
but now at least he'll know what time it was
when she decided that she'd leave and not return.
(c) Ellen Gillette, 2020
Note: Never read things into someone's poetry. It's poetry. A random observation, an overheard remark, a third-hand anecdote. Anything's fair game when it comes to poetry, especially when there's a writing group coming up and homework needs to be done.
