Twenty-four hours rolled up in paper —
A package of the past, glossy and opaque;
Success is lost if wrapped, but so is a mistake,
The mastery occluded in the labor.
The confectioner weighs out ounces of rapture
Into layers cunningly arranged,
Into the hours’ order that assortments capture —
Foil to be crumpled, rank to be deranged.
I gave my love a box of thirty wrapped
Days of indifference, each in a coating
Of irony — a nice glaze, not gloating —
Never less than tactful toward the packaged trapped.
And why should a lover’s tactics be invisible
When everything innate, rapt, tactile resists
This parceling out, this fastening up in lists,
But lashes out at time and strews the physical.