By: Julia Knowlton

Do we travel for this—non-meaning, non-belonging?
Now on the grey clock, I do not owe you a thing.
You cannot know if I will ever come home. Here, strangers are the same
as the people I love most—ergo, death no longer matters.

Food trays separate hour from hour. Or tiny bottles of liquor,
or black coffee with sugar—but even meal time makes no sense.
(We all have dinner at three am). I get home to find one bee dried dead
into the thick bath mat. In response, I clean-quick many surfaces.

The bills on the table do not yet exist. Time has become
its own perfect excuse. Sleep eludes me like explanations of loss.
Limbs heavy as boat masts, the mind row upon row of shaded arcades.
Then just as far as near, the purest gold statue.