we are losing our spin

     & the days are unbearably long

     plants cannot adapt 

     to the sun’s sluggish pendulum 

& although our deadlines 

     were just days away

     those days stretch 

     into centuries 

under the clouds’ lolling tongues 

     & what is time now 

     that we’ve unclasped ourselves 

     from its hands? 

Our bodies have de-synced 

     from the rhythm 

     our ancestors harnessed 

     some consider renaming days— 

& suddenly the watches quit

     all relevance 

     evaporates into notyears while 

     recordstimestampslibrarycardsbirthdays 

     become undecipherable relics

the neighbors who just moved in 

     upstairs say they’ve been watching 

     today’s sunset since they met 

     & soon the whole block has locked eyes 

     on the red-dipped lilac clouds that drag 

     an orange sky to pause

dusk lingers, 

     disorienting birds and bats

     we sleep until we’re drunk on darkness

     braided into nocturnal narratives

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Elizabeth Porter is a teacher and poet living in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Her chapbook Elemental Undress (Bottlecap Press) was recently published in December 2023. Her work has appeared in Trampoline Journal, Ballast, Moria Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an MFA student at Lindenwood University.