My hands are calloused, cracked from clinging tightly
to threads unraveling deep in the dusk of night.
Each breath I borrow bears a rusted weight,
a sigh unscreamed, a twist of tethered fate.
I am the yoke where hope was once affixed,
now fraying ropes and gears that won’t be fixed.

She wept again, with no warning in the wind,
just silence steeped in loss she dared not mend.
The third goodbye to something less than whole,
each pink slip torn, another unpaid toll.
And still I rise…
These two graves I dig with time,
one for my youth, and one for the end of my time.

There is no shore that meets me when I sleep,
just oceans filled with debts I cannot keep.
The ceiling talks in creaks and static threats,
each bulb above me flickers cold regrets.
What kind of man can break and still pretend
he’s steel? When every bend forewarns the end.
My child dreams while I dissolve in dawn,
a phantom father pressed beneath a pawn.
I hold her laughter like a lung holds air, as if it’s the last one I will get.
Much too tight, afraid the gasp will not be there.
My wife, eyes blank, a porcelain betrayed,
stares past the walls where once her colors shown true.
O God, my God or ghost of echoing ache,
how many nights until the sinews break?
Each shift, each tick of the clock that mocks the efforts you forsake,
pulls marrow from a man who’s already dead.
Yet still I smile, wide as a wound can smile,
and walk that extra, graveled, grimy mile.

But I am rust. I am the scream unshed
The faithful mule they’ll work until he’s bled.
There is no balm, no savior’s whispered song.
There’s only me, and I won’t last for long.