Sonnet for the Unpaid Invoice

I wrote to you in April, then in May,and twice in June, politely, with a date.You answered none. I taught myself to waitthe way a stone is taught: by lying there.

The money is not much. That is not it.It is the silence, dressed as oversight,that makes a debt of something infiniteand leaves me itemising my own worth.

So here: one line for every day you took,one foot for every promise that came loose.I have been paid in metre, not in pounds,and metre, unlike you, arrives on time.

Consider this receipt. Consider itthe only thing of ours that ever shipped.