A poem about to watch
The Dying Watch
In Orlando, the black glass went dark—
forty-eight hours of silence
where the buzzing used to be.
I waited for the panic.
It didn’t come.
Instead, something loosened.
A small unbuckling
I hadn’t known was tight.
-----
For three years I wore the future on my wrist:
heart rate, steps, sleep score,
the insistent closing of rings.
It knew my resting pulse,
my breathing, my stillness—
it knew when I was failing
to be optimized.
Each night I fed it power.
Each morning it fed me numbers.
We were bound, the watch and I,
in a covenant of data.
-----
Now I wear my grandfather’s math:
quartz and liquid crystal,
a battery that lasts for years.
It tells me only the time,
which is all I ever needed,
which is almost nothing,
which is enough.
The Casio asks no questions.
It sends no summaries.
It doesn’t know my heart
and I am lighter for it.
-----
Sometimes the dying of a thing
is not a loss
but a permission:
*You can stop counting now.
You can just live.*