by Susan Eyre Coppock
If I could bend back time
I would not see
the doctor’s hand
jiggle
as he spoke.
I would not hear the word
invasive.
If I could bend back time
I would not be standing
here
holding my watch,
marking a line with my foot.
This side is before
this side is after.
But I am here now
as the watch falls
easily
from my unlucky fingers
through the metal bars of a grate,
its frayed band a note of
red
lying on the dead leaves.
I need a plan to
deal with its loss,
an act of defiance.
My own red-faced
jab of fingers through the grate.
I’ll get you yet
watch.
Susan Eyre Coppock is a retired French teacher from Massachusetts. Her creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Constellations, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, Main Street Rag, and Lily Poetry Review. Susan will be featured in Make Poetry Concrete where her poem will be engraved in a sidewalk in Newton, Massachusetts.