The Waiting

(for Erin)

By Zara Meadows

Scene opens - and the catastrophe in me
is waiting for the catastrophe in you. Every yellow moon

whole poems wander in to wait for
their subject, their muse - one time I’ll sit them all down,

introduce their words to you. The space
between our gliding hands colliding into softness

is a crowded waiting room in Paradise; 
the unsaid stars between our open mouths are

eternal clocks ticking, and ticking. Tomorrow
I will wait for nothing more than the knowledge you’re 

alive, will wander in the waiting hours all the while
knowing this to be true: that the past version of me

lived whole calendars waiting for this future you. Take all my white
spaces and give them each an hour - let them be turned over

in the sand - for, my daily bread, time is not 
enamoured with you as I am (nothing can be). But now, now I

am waiting for something that is no longer
waiting - an earthquake in a suburban town, the catastrophic hand

sliding down, the dawning of our rush-hour age, a blot of ink bleeding across this page.