time blind

i want everyone to be late.
i want to wait around & decide
to cancel the big beautiful something
that i didn't feel like doing anyway.
my sadness has arms. it has lungs.
there are not enough
days to grieve. i make a thirteenth hour
& i tell no one about it. i think 
i will let it sit between 2pm & 3pm 
because no one does anything then
anyway. the hour will be violet
& on occasion, iridescent. i'm sorry
i don't want to share anymore. 
inside the hour i will get more than
nothing done. i will get so real
that work i've made will come apart.
do you ever wish you hadn't given
a part of yourself to a little machine?
i do all the time. if we were all late
maybe we could laugh more. eat more.
train the clocks to hold enough moths
to keep us alive. my father was always early.
we were the first to mass. the first
to the farmer's market. 
the first in line at the diner 
on a bruised leg morning. my lovers
always tell me i can only live in extremes.
if i don't arrive at all, can we just
both agree i was a different kind 
of late. i am a hypocrite because 
when someone doesn't show on me,
i always say, "i was stood up." tiny dates
for the tiny specks we are. once as a girl
i changed all the clocks in the house
so that we would leave sooner. 
i do not remember how my parents reacted.
maybe in all their rushing
from one mouth to another
they thought, "why can't we all
do that?" i am running early for
an appointment with a pile of shoes. 
i take a flight there. 
no one else boards but me.