They said the job was a clock,
and I was a gear,
but my teeth didn’t fit—
I spun too fast,
or not at all,
and the hands fell off.

I sat in the silence
of a room that hums my name
broken,
a misfit cog.

The country is a machine,
and I am the loose screw
rolling under the table,
lost in the dust.
They don’t look for me.Now I wander the streets,
in a city of clocks,
And my stutter creates a syncopation.