Daylight saving time ends. / Lila Goldstein

Daylight saving time ends.

Lila Goldstein

We are both in our classes discussing extraction,

like skin of my thumbs flicked onto the living room rug, and what stings like a burn.

On our walks we always talk about the houses, what it would

feel like to own one. Warm stairwells. You name colors.

The frogs at the park pond must partially freeze in the mud, not able to cook

and eat dinner for roommates, not able to fuck either. Asking: what if one day

in spring you wake up as a baby, never sleeping again? A croak. A low hum.

Asking: Alexa, what’s an allegory? And an absence of voice. A nonanswer.

Dangerous to go places, especially in dark times. But Stop & Shop is open

until midnight. Great houseplants there. Just exciting enough to come

down super late for. Then the open of trees without leaves; guitar,

pick, capo. Still air in the streetlight; dew, an ear for white noise.

The fog of short days always spent on our knees.