We balance hours on a tilted plate
Each chore an angle we negotiate
The faucet drips a fractured rhyme—
A sonnet for the grease we can’t unwind

The calendar’s spine creaks with doubt
A spine of days we’re carved without

Praise be to the tilt of the leaning tower
The weight we carry in borrowed power
Praise be to the drip that charts our toll—
The silent tax on the unslept soul

Your sigh etches lines in the window’s haze
A fresco of fatigue in the morning’s gaze
The kettle sings a tune half-learned—
A hymn for the bridges we never burned

The calendar’s spine creaks with doubt
A spine of days we’re carved without

Praise be to the tilt of the leaning tower
The weight we carry in borrowed power
Praise be to the drip that charts our toll—
The silent tax on the unslept soul

The broom writes psalms on linoleum floors
Each sweep a verse that the grime ignores
We scrub the stains that time won’t keep—
A liturgy of loss, a vigil cheap

We measure life in unkept vows
In the slant of Sun that the blinds allow
Praise be to the seams we choose to sow—
The only maps of the paths we know