Oven Clock

Five days since the clocks went back and the oven still hasn't heard. It glows an hour ahead of us over the cold rings, green, and sure of itself.

Nobody fixes it. The buttons want a sequence no one keeps, hold this, press that twice, the manual in a drawer under the takeaway menus.

So we do the sum. She reads it off the stove and takes one away without looking up, the way you step over a loose stair you've stopped meaning to mend.

Outside it's been dark since before five. Friday. The pasta water rolls. In March the light will come back and the oven will be right again, having done nothing,

the only one in the house that won't have had to change.