Decline and a Kind of Fall

​
The news broke.
A rash broke out.
A man and his lover broke up. 
A woman broke down and ran,

ran fast, like a clock
with the hour hand gone,
the minute hand broken
and the face falling
farther by the second,
falling on a Tuesday.

Everything fell on a Tuesday— 
even the woman’s birthday, 
which had never 
fallen on that day before. 

It was also on that day that an orphan 
came down with a fever.
The man came down 
with another lover,
and the woman 
came up with an idea.

Her idea was that, 
if the fever broke, 
she and the man and his lover
would give the child a future— 

the finest that had ever
befallen an orphan.

By chance, it was Tuesday.
The child’s fever fell as far
as could be imagined

and his future happened.