Recently, I did a writing workshop with one of my living heroes, Shane Koyczan: an incredibly talented, award-winning, spoken word poet and author from Canada.
As part of the workshop, I wrote and shared a poem, titled The Watch. After a long, pregnant pause, Shane slowly shook his head, looked at me hard and said “Fuck… I wish I’d written that myself.”
Which, in my book, is as good as a Gold Cannes Lion for poetry. So thank you, Shane Koyczan. You rock.
Below is the poem.
The Watch
I keep time in my hands
patient, consistent.
I had to.
It took her long enough to find me, to claim me.
But I understand
we’re both part of a disappearing world.
In the childhood she was sentenced to
they gave her 20 years
And when she got out, she had to start over,
reset time.
Her face is young
but her eyes tell a different story
She knows every day on the outside is fresh and crisp,
a dip in an ocean always startlingly cold.
She takes after her father.
That’s all he left her.
She still wears his anger like an ill-fitting coat,
a mannerism she distrusts in others
but can’t help repeating:
a second-hand, stuck at midnight.
Violence was his gift and he gave it freely,
it flowed through his hands
like the hours flow through mine
He never took it back
(the violence)
unlike the other things he tried to gift her
On the day we meet, she turns me over,
the proof of my past life weighs in her palm.
Once broken. Repaired.
Gleaming under the indifferent light of new possibility.
We fit.
“I’ll take it,” she says,
with a deep breath that lets me know
this is the most money she’s ever spent on herself.
I feel her pulse racing. Blood warming.
We’re in sync.
Sometimes I still wake her in the middle of the night
just to remind her we’re someplace else now, someplace safe.
Together, we take back the places she never dared venture,
the years of silence from her father,
we take them back.
We take it all back.
Just like he took back the watch.