Keeping Time

Since you left the faucet’s started dripping.
I asked it to stop; It would not.

The lithe silver neck wilts as it cries,
Watching me make the coffee
Nodding out tears that go plunk all morning,
Like it understands why two cups is too many
And the extra stagnates all day in the carafe
Staining the glass the sick color of burnt chocolate.

I catch myself swaying along with the ticking
In idle evenings spent staring at a blank TV screen.
It wastes water, keeps time, my immutable metronome
while I burn down slowly like someone left in a hurry
and forgot to shut off the oven.

In fitful dreams the dripping is a knock at the door
gone unanswered, for I am distracted in the kitchen
trembling with fury, strangling to death
that mercurial throat that drummed a lonely racket
in the stainless steel basin, counting out mocking measures
of this new silence.