How Time Passes

[matsunosuperfan]

Hi matsunosuperfan,

Title is aptly chosen, I think it frames the poem well with clear intentions. I go into it with the feeling that each line is an examination of second after second contained in this moment of a faltering relationship.

How Time Passes

If it were up to me, everyone would look the same
as you. Then I could be miserable These first lines are arresting. Misery as a desired state, a reflection of how people gravitate toward the familiar, no matter how unhealthy the familiar might be 
everywhere I went: I go to order coffee, your lips

ask me about oatmilk. Someone crashes
their suburban through the paper door
of my garage, it’s you who comes to judge The way this image is inserted into the poem makes me wonder if this is only a metaphor or if it was an actual occurrence, and the following line doesn't clarify much. Made whole in what way? I think the answer could be an opportunity for the use of more concrete details.

if I should be made whole. You get exhausted
holding onto hope. It makes the muscles give up
all their calcium, scream like lobsters delicately

boiled alive, animals too dumb to know
the screaming does no good. Old and stupid
as I am, somehow I know better. When it’s time Essentially, the speaker details what it must be like for their partner to invest hope in their relationship, but the speaker claims they know better than to still have hope. It makes me wonder if the speaker's misery takes its form in the dissociation that follows after disillusionment with their s/o. In retrospect, this interpretation makes me want to change the verb tense of "you get exhausted..." to "you will get exhausted..."

to pay the bill, not even my teeth rattle.
I spread my hands and look you calmly
in the eye, accept the shitty latte
that for now will keep them warm. Since the rest of this poem proceeds from the colon in the first stanza with some disjointed imagery (not a bad thing), it feels as though we are still in this scenario where everyone looks the same as this s/o and this stanza is a summation of the speaker's quiet suffering of this interaction with her waiter.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you kindly for the thoughtful reading. It makes me aware of how static the poem is, which is probably the main reason I don't really like it.