Metered

I keep a small room inside my chest

where the lights flicker but never fail.

It is not clean. It is not calm.

It is furnished with what survived.

There is a chair made of waiting.

There is a table scarred by names.

The floor remembers every weight

that learned how not to stay.

Some nights I lend my body out

like a harbor with no questions asked.

Ships arrive leaking language,

leave believing they were storms.

I am not ashamed of the traffic.

I am ashamed of the silence after,

when the tide goes out too far

and my hands forget their work.

Once, I thought love was a lock.

Then a key. Then a wound with rules.

Now I think it’s a voltage—touch it wrong and everything goes dark.

Still, I wake. Still, I make coffee.

Still, the cat breathes like a metronome.

The world insists on small continuations,

and I have learned to answer them.

If this is survival, it is not heroic.

It is ordinary. It hums. It repeats.

A woman keeps time with her own pulse

and calls that meaning.