Sunken Garden Poetry Festival

Rebekah Hayes Photo: Hill-Stead Museum

The Ticking Hand

I sit at the table with the cup in my hand,
my watch up by my ear. And from here, the ticking hand

sounds like a fly hitting a window over and over
until it is eight. When I was a child, I never listened

to the ticking of my watch, with the ticking hand of my father
still stroking the fine uneven strips of hair

that fell in front of my eyes and behind my ears
And even when he wasn't home, the space between the sink

and table did not seem so white. The jagged thorns of the wreath
scrape the window pane with a small cry, and I can hear

the snow melting away like a secret between me and the silence.
My mother was sitting across the table with a purple glass

of Zinfandel the night before, talking between sips
like the real woman I hadn't seen. He is not the same man,

she says from time to time, and we know we don't know why.
It could be work, we think, and it could be mid-life creeping like cold.

We tell him to let things go, say no to what he can at work,
but his face only loses color, and he says he's got responsibilities.

I miss him, you could say. I long for that ticking hand that used to crack
my windows in the evening, and kiss my forehead with its fingertips.

And as I think of going away to school in the Fall, I hate
the feeling that I'll be leaving my mother alone, married

to herself. When my father explodes at every question, the kitchen
seems to shake. And I don't know if the quake is more terrifying than the silence.

Rebekah Hayes
Used with permission

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