Minute Hand at Midnight

Hold me like the window’s cracked,
a fine white vein across the night.
This breath, this one—count it—two—
our ribs clicking like cooling glass.

Your hands don’t tremble: they set me,
edge to edge, a cup on a tilting shelf.
We learned our math on breaking:
seconds tallied, sand that won’t keep still.

Not hope, not fear—your knuckles
map my back the way a file
finds the burr along a lip.
Say nothing. Let touch take the groove.

If the roof gives way to stars,
if the streetlight hums its failing filament,
hold—like heat holds sand to clarity.
I am here. You are here. Hear the ring.

Touch me like tomorrow’s rationed,
like water in a blackout, slow, exact.
Promise with your mouth, not words—
salt, breath, a bruise learning my name.

We are a structure of moments,
mortar thin as tide lines on a glass.
If the ledger stops at this page,
let the ink run hot and clean.

Listen—outside, a siren threads the dark;
inside, our hearts keep a steadier meter.
Turn the dial. Bring the burner low.

Kiss me where the fissure widens.
Kiss me like you’ll set the seam.
Nothing else exists—no morning, no kiln log—
just lips, and the room, and the held breath between.

If the world ends ash or flame,
I’ll go under speaking the vowel of your name—
long, open, bright as glass from the kiln—
and still, still here.

Kiss me again, while the minute hand hesitates.
While the pane holds. While the night does not.
Kiss me like the end is near—
and I am here.

—ending mode: echo