my right hand smells of strong coffee and blood because sometimes things take time not yet medicated only potentially diagnosed still weak incoherently stumbling days into nights i scream and scream at the floor and the blood and the strained way things take time sometimes leaking out from everywhere i am nothing but being nothing would be better than this and i keep seeing her--on the overpass her tiny pink hands rising out of the pavement waving at my empty space aluminum bowl insides--another morning like a sickness she lies locked in the storm drain plastic baby girl hand next to the white plastic tip of a smoked cigar like trash she and i cut and i run cry unspent memory destroyed into quicksand pavement life--she finds me at home rising out of the ashes surrounded by smoked cigarettes and the lonely shivering street lamps at night she finds me at home drunk and waiting for the way things take time and i want to pull her out of me like smoke into lungs but the locks are broken and even though we both have keys and we've walked through fields of crashing crickets like dancing girls the man says there's no way to mend that harm and then i crash and fall and break skin like memory and hear your voice saying words you've never said to me that things take time