The clock on the stove

The clocks went back last Sunday, and every clock in the apartment agreed to it except the one on the stove. It has two buttons and no instructions, and my husband was the one who knew which to hold and for how long. For eleven years I have let it be wrong from November to March, an hour ahead of the street, as if the kitchen were living somewhere slightly east of Providence.

I used to correct for it without thinking. Now I find I read it on purpose. At nine in the morning it says ten, and I take that as the time the essay is due rather than the time it is. At five, when the sky over Westminster Street has already given up, the stove says six and the dark seems less early, more like something I was told about.

This morning I stood with my thumb on one of the buttons and did not press it. A clock wrong in a known way is still company. It keeps his hour.

The coffee is ready. The stove says it is later than it is. That has been true for a while.