spoken word
I use to count every stair when I walked up the steps
Only to go back down halfway till the middle of each foot sat on the edges evenly 16 times.
I would switch the foot I felt like I was leading with when I walked,
To make sure I didn't take too many steps between the concrete sidewalk squares on either foot.
When I ran I would sometimes trip and fall,
Because I felt like I was using one leg more than the other and tried to even the strides mid Sprint.
But she made me slow down.
She made me forget to count.
Sometimes I had to double back and count again;
But some times, on the best days,
I didn't need to count at all.
I scrunched my toes between the shadows on the street when the sun was setting,
Because I felt like I belonged evenly in the sunlight and the darkness.
I would hum to myself
I would hum to myself
I would hum out loud to myself
Till I felt like I hit all of the cadences equally.
1...2...3...4...5...6...
I would pause and start over counting because nothing should go more than 6 seconds without a break.
But you broke me.
I went 3 years without a break.
5 years of being a father and 3 being a husband that never counted unless it was teaching my kids how to count to 10.
They didn't learn to pause after 6
Or how to hum to themselves
Hum to themselves
Hum quietly or loudly to themselves while they counted or walked down the stairs.
But I needed a break.
I needed a break from not needing breaks.
Because you broke me of my 6 second breaks to make sure life wasn't moving too fast.
But it did.
Life passed so quickly I forgot to count or scrunch my toes because I didn't like the shadows as much as the sun
And when I sang to my daughter I always had the right cadence when I sang the itsy bitsy spider.
But then she left me.
And I'm left counting the minutes in 6 second intervals till i'll sing to my daughter again.
I'm counting the steps to my car as I walked away from the place we lived together for the last time.
I sleep with my toes scrunched because I'm afraid the sun will remind me of the days I forgot to care about time.
I hum to myself hum to myself
HUM OUT LOUD TO MYSELF
The itsy bitsy spider song because I can't get it or the cadence out of my head.
I've been broken my whole life,
But for 5 years as a father and 3 years as a husband I forgot that I was broken
And it felt good.
You made me realize that I'm fixable,
I'm not a lost cause
I just can't stop thinking or counting or humming because every 6 seconds is 6 seconds I'm spending being broken for 6 more seconds at a time.
And 6 seconds from now I will have scrunched my toes and hummed to myself getting ready to do it again in another 6 seconds.
So forgive me for counting every memory every song every picture every morning every dinner and breakfast and lunch and weekend and weekday because,
I went to remember every single second I ever spent not counting them all.
Time is man-made, I control it.
I control every 6 seconds of my life
If I just keep counting down the time till I can forget to count,
and can forget to let go of the control that I have,
so I can get control of the time that I never had.
You fixed me,
For 438,000 6 second intervals...
Just to let me break again.
So I will never stop counting.
Because the last time I gave up my 6 second hold on life...
It went spiraling out of control,
And counting the number of times I saw it coming
Didn't do a damn thing to stop it.
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