Jeffery Allen Tobin
The Necessary Hour
There’s always a point—
early evening, say—when the day
leans out the door like an old landlady,
pauses, purse in hand,
and wonders if she left the gas on.
That’s when the traffic hushes,
not fully, just enough
that you could mistake it
for something like peace.
The trees settle, unbothered
by what they don’t know.
A man in a third-floor window
reaches for his shirt,
shakes out the sleeves,
and doesn’t see the woman
watching from the pavement,
who doesn’t see the boy
standing at the bus stop,
who doesn’t see the dog
circling the same patch of grass,
or the sparrow jerking sideways,
wary of movement,
or the sidewalk darkening
like a dampened rag,
or me—
noticing them all at once,
as if for the first time.
It happens daily,
this hour of accidental arrangement.
No one mentions it.
No one asks for it.
No one keeps it.
But it keeps happening.
What Was Left
The morning after, the house was still standing.
The trees were still trees,
though I could not tell
if they were waiting for something
or had already received it.
I walked to the table,
put my hand on the wood.
It was semi-solid.
The kind of solid
that makes you distrust your own body.
Outside, the garden had begun its slow undoing—
a season folding into itself,
petals turning inward,
a thinning of green.
I thought: I have seen this before.
But I had not.
Not like this.
Once, I believed in returning.
That what was taken
would be given back,
not in the same shape,
but close enough
that I could press it to my chest
and say: mine.
But the garden,
the table,
the morning—
they had nothing to give.
They only waited,
as if I were the one
who had left.
