The dog is nine years three months six days old and still counting, the old man sits and counts up in a chair rocking on an old porch, creaking floorboards faded wooden again from turquoise, turning raw in their old age. Parts of the floorboard have chipped away beneath the chairs wasted slats and yet the old man still sits, counting down time like a train whistling at a trespasser on the tracks like a stray hair curling from it's braid get off those tracks 'cause you know it's not your place. All we ever do is rot back down to the floors we came from and maybe all we end up doing is completing a week and then we're not counting anymore, and maybe the chair doesn't rock back to dust and forth to nine years three months and six days old and we sit on our old porches watching the train tracks and maybe we know it's not the time or the place but a train whistles at the trespasser and we watch the young girl and we count down, looking away when it happens. But we're not counting any more and we sink into the porches we came from.