by Matthew Johnson
In the days following a late February snow
That had turned itself a little muddy,
I find myself walking with Time,
As though it were an old friend I hadn’t seen in years.
We were on the edge of something, I believe:
A field, a moment, an extra day that should not have existed.
Behind us, the Calendar mumbled to themselves,
As if trying to remember how an extra day slipped into its pages.
The Clocks were tangled, too shy to ask what was next.
Time hands me this bonus day like a forgotten letter,
Warm from having just been written;
Here, it says, like it owes me an explanation.
I hold the extra day,
Like a coin with two faces,
One old, one new,
Flipping between possibility and regret.
We stop for a photograph,
Though I’m not sure who is behind the lens.
The sky is heavy with the weight of all the new seconds,
And the ground, soft with promises of things undone.
Say, ‘tomorrow,’ Time suggests,
But my mouth is full of today.
I glance at the Calendar, half expecting it to apologize,
But instead, it asks: how do you think you’ll use it?
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