27 minutes
is how long it takes my father to reply to my
happy birthday email.
He says his friends, ‘the great unwashed’, came to
sing around the piano to celebrate
the eightieth year he’s been alive.
I don’t send anything back.

75 minutes
is how long it takes to catch up
on the life of a friend. He nearly cries twice.
Money, and moving, and relationships.
‘I haven’t written much lately,’ he says.
I know what he means. His feeling is real and
mine is imagined.

50 minutes
is how long I spend with my therapist
once a month
because I can’t afford to see him more often.
I condense my problems into chunks
That fit into our allotment of time.

In 80 years, a person will live 29,220 days.
9,733 of those days are spent sleeping.
78 days waiting for a reply email.
217 days having coffee with friends.
About 20 days talking to a therapist.

A life cannot be distilled into accounting.
Sometimes it feels like the only way
to put one foot in front of the other.