A man tracked himself every morning for a year
and pencilled the dots onto graph paper above the microwave.
His wife said it looked like a heart monitor and she was not wrong.

In December he laid a ruler across it.
One line. Tilted. Patient. Unmistakable.

He stood in the kitchen working out
that he had spent three hundred mornings being upset
at a line which had been going the right way the whole time.

The Book of Patience 9:9