The clock strikes midnight,
the hour hand a hammer
the minutes a skinny nail digging into tomorrow,
but my heart is drunk half a day in the past,
clinking fragile glasses with ghosts.

How can this be the same planet
when we share its land and its air
but not its days?
There are two worlds that exist,
one the night before, one the day after,
and the gulf in between is sealed.
You live in one, and I in the other.
They are not at war
but like cousins who once fancied the same girl,
they meet only on occasion.

We bring the New Year in together by being half a world apart
as if to prove that despite empty spaces where you were,
you remain.

How do you share a new decade
with the soul you’ve shared for half
when the miles will not speak to each other?
They eat my words and misreport my intentions,
and my heart will not coax them into cooperation.

Frost earned his wisdom from walls,
but bricks are far more forgiving than the miles
and teach softer lessons.
The Atlantic is a moat and
my daydreams may be dogged swimmers,
but they are dashed like dying starfish on the East Coast with the tide.
Half the world is a wall and I whisper to you through peepholes,
cursed to peer through one eye and by half the world’s light,
reaching into the past desperately with a hooked finger.
It is as futile to describe the rift with this shadow of sign language,
as these words are.

The Earth turns one full circle into next year,
and I find that I have also been turned around,
but it is only me that has turned, and nothing has changed
about us spinning, spinning.