At 7:35 A.M, you lay your tired body on mine

before peeling off, like a slow band-aid.

At 8:40 you sprint home and make instant coffee.

At 9:45 we finally drink it, cold.

I finish your leftover half.

By 10:50 you are already breathless.

I live for every time we overlap.

When 11:55 comes I spend the entire minute convincing you to stay.

You never do.

By noon I put my hands on your shoulders and say, “Baby,

you’re getting thin. All this running in circles and barely sitting down to eat.”

At 1:05 you tell me that while you were gone,

15,300 babies were born.

At 2:10 you don’t say a word,

just come in and kiss me for sixty seconds straight.

At 3:15 we sit quiet, listening to rain falling everywhere

in the world at once: all 15,000 tons.

At 4:20 we pull a little from the tight joint I keep behind your ear.

You do not inhale.

At 5:25 you meet me for happy hour.

My neck already salted, a lime wedged in my teeth,

a shot of tequila sitting on the bar.

At 6:30 I hear the ticking.

I count your heartbeat like seconds between thunderclaps.

By 7:35 I can see you in the distance,

each second a tease until you drape over me.

We always love quick and you never let me hold you.

I dream of drinking you through a straw.

At 8:40 you watch my beard grow 0.00027 of an inch.

At 9:45 we do not speak.

Too many people have died since we last met.

At 10:50 we pray for a meteor,

at least a clumsy kid to spill sugar in our gears.

11:55 is my favorite.

We’re only apart for mere minutes.

But at midnight you’ll apologize sixty times

because it will always be like this.

At 1:04 AM I am already sleeping.

It’s exhausting loving someone

who is constantly running away.

– Megan Falley, “What the Hour Hand Said to the Minute Hand”