Midnight, in my kitchen (A third prose sestina)

Last night, I stood on a chair with a weak supporting bar between the legs and stretched my hands up toward my kitchen light, which blew as soon as I flipped the switch on Sunday. I stressed the glass trying to turn what ended up being unturnable, and it creaked resistance before beginning to go – counter-clockwise.

The clock in my kitchen is the only one I haven’t turned back yet. I must like the mental correction of having to subtract an hour – it’s a constant reminder: I’m not there yet, I’m not there yet – which I know is perverse. I'm backward.

I am unfaithful to you. I’m here, then not here – in the kitchen making egg salad: putting the eggs on to boil, selecting watercress and rinsing it, putting it green on top of the plastic bag I took it from, running back in to type – but you don’t know the difference. It’s all one time to you.

Lucky for you, too, since time doesn’t turn back. You wouldn’t get those minutes returned to you if you had to wait for me.

The light’s cover wasn’t a screw-on. It’s held up by three nails, each keeping tension on the indented lip of the fixture. I was unfaithful to its form and kept trying to force it around, loosening it from one of the nails, but not enough to pull it down. My arms ached; I stretched backward to peer up at the whitened glass and promised myself that I’d fix that last clock, which ticked at me from the table.

I would have gotten to the clock just in time to turn it backward on the hour – 1 a.m. – if the light hadn’t been so unfaithful to me. It kept threatening to fall, and just as my arms threatened to give out, I saw the nails as I turned, and twisted them out.

That stupid, unfaithful clock continued unheeding, ticking away an hour in the future. My shoulders were clenching. I pulled the light down just in time, turned away, almost fell backward off the chair.

My faith has gone backward – I’m backslidden, they’d say, gone down the slippery slope into unfaithfulness. (Dear God, why don’t you love me? You’re so far – but it’s not even you I’m talking to; I’m not turning toward you. Does some internal clock always tell us when it’s time to head away from the light? Is the desert necessary in one’s late twenties, sans babies, sans prospects, with only self to focus on?)

The light recedes, if it was ever really there, heading backward until it’s a pinpoint. This time it’s definitely not me being unfaithful; it’s you.

Last night, I picked up the clock and considered turning its knob, watching its hands cradle the correct minute and rest between accurate hours.

But the time to be unfaithful wasn’t over.

I screwed a new bulb into the kitchen light socket, but let the pinprick continue heading backward, illuminating only my past.

The clock continues an hour in the future, turning my kitchen into a prophecy.