The Oven Clock

The phones did it in the night, quietly, like good staff. The laptop knew by breakfast. Even the car, which knows nothing, was told by the sky.

The oven wasn't. It says 7:40 while the kitchen says 6:40, green and certain, an hour into an evening nobody else has reached.

It takes two buttons, held together, and a kind of patience I keep for other things.

So all winter I'll do the sum, take one away, the way you lower your voice for someone who hasn't heard yet.

In March it will be right again without my lifting a finger, the way some people are.