The Dessert

The kitchen clock unspools its rusted hands,

While glass-bound oceans dream upon the walls.

A stranger sits in unremembered lands,

Where golden rain in jagged slivers falls.

Upon the sill, a strange and burning sphere—

A sun brought low, encased in lattice bone.

It smells of salt, of afternoons too near,

Of tropic islands carved from frozen stone.

The crust is spun from memory and sand,

A pale horizon holding back the tide.

I lift the knife—an extension of my hand—

To pierce the veil where memories abide.

The amber syrup bleeds across the plate,

Not sugar sweet, but bittered with regret.

We taste the hours we lingered too late,

A sunlit grief we never could forget.

A single slice suspended in the air,

Defies the pull and floats toward the dark.

We eat the ghosts of what was never there,

And leave the night with an unfinished mark.