I’ve been counting days again.

In wine glasses and carrot sticks.

Counting breath. Times I wake at night.

Eight mostly. Emails. Track the hours

that counted. The phone tells me no.

Pay checks though I pay myself. The small

fires I set to my body. When I was twelve

I read six hundred calories was how you

stayed loved. Sometimes I go over. Still

count the years since your face turned

a bedlamp light. Two pillows drowning.  

Suddenly I need more hands for each winter.

The morphine shots. Those I misplaced.

My father’s nightmares the times I saw him

cry. Twice. How long I’ll live if I live as long

as my grandmother. She didn’t know her birthday.

Perhaps late March? Perhaps never.  Am I over

half way? Counting the books my mother left

the morning they came for her. Saying it was a library.

A life. She took one son. And where are they now?

Their pages and days. Pine leaves on a mountain

held for forty-seven Julys. Old loves. Counting cities

I haven’t been. Florence. Miami. Thessaloniki.

It goes. How much longer my children need me.

Counting what I want — a river and eyes that stare

out towards the dark. That strange unspent day.

When I reached beneath the slush to gather my

memories the sea snapped my hand.