Inheritance and Repairs

Grandfather's watch gets its fifth repair.

In the off chance that I don't look at your text, 

and the time flashes on my phone, I turn my wrist for remembrance.

Repairs overshot the cost of the watch, but we are creatures of nostalgia

Something I was taught in class.

But even false exaggerations of my childhood memories, your watch ticks the right time.

There's an odd pleasure of stolen sweaters and watches.

Both don't belong to the time they're in.

And both of them are passed down before their time.

The inheritance of land, of value, of the marked pathways

have all been sealed in the holey sweater and broken watch,

that I insist on patching every time.

Your hand-me-downs manifest in odd places.

In poetry and song scribbled between pages of work,

In remedies and potions that require heart and patience,

In resilience, in repairs.

I find myself coming back to the familiarity of your groundedness,

knowing what keeps me afloat is this inherited stillness, this never-ending love

I find myself repairing with a fervor.

A new strength builds in every patchwork, in every battery change,

in every scribble of freedom, in every song of the old,

in every inheritance of yours, in every repair of mine.