Your watch stopped forty-five minutes after you died.
Years later I brought it from that shallow drawer
where the futile artifacts resided (donor card,
wallet with petrol receipts, driving cap to hide no hair),
and placed it on my wrist, forced to adjust the link;
unlike you, I have yet to be eaten. Then I waited,
hoping that with each stride I took, with a pulse,
the innards would be granted energy and stir.

In the morning I woke to no change, shaking hard,
willing it on; next seated with mother in a repair shop,
terse glances at the work room. The attendant
returned it with a frown, even a look of hostility,
confirming that it was beyond repair, that somehow
the coils and springs had been wrenched inside-out,
and what precise, violent change of atmosphere
had afflicted me, pulverizing each mechanism clear?

I hurried home, cradled that unresponsive metal in my palms,
awed by the tumultuousness of your passing–
how, so trapped in bed, you struggled within
and sundered time to the anger of leaving us alone.

–Ashley D. Faulkner