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Short-timer's Calendar Like a benediction of blue feathers, minutes & seconds moved me beyond who I was before I knew I could snap, seeing each hour worked down to salt under a white grinding stone. Fd lie awake listening to insects closing another season, & recounting tick marks on the back of a lover's photograph— where now meets then. Another day gone, a few more young faces dissolving from the formation. Sometimes I wrestled their ghosts in my sleep, with the Southern Cross balanced on a branch weighing a cloud of sparrows. Back in August Sarge said, "If you want to stay in one piece, don't hang around short-timers. They just trip over booby traps." It was like playing tic-tac-toe with God. Each x, a stitch holding breath together, a map that went nowhere— like lies told to trees. I watched them grow into an ink blot, an omen, a sign the dead could read. 43 ...

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