Poems don’t write themselves
they say, 
and the future is written in pencil,
the past in pen,

but this poem is pouring out
as mercury used to from
broken thermometers, 
that always broke themselves
much like this poem writes itself.

I’d push that silvery blob
around with a pencil across
the table,
splitting it into two or three
then pushing them close

where suddenly, on their own, 
they’d join again,
as if they had agency,

as if love was a measure of 
distance, 
or perhaps proximity a
measure of love. 

And of breaking glass, 
I should erase that account above,
for of course I snapped that
thermometer myself,
purposely,

and pushing that glass into
a small hopeful pile
destroyed my love analogy

similar to the way
writing this poem in pen
has caught common sense
in a lie.