Time
I came to the observatory expecting stars,
hoping for the comfort of distant light,
to gaze upward, untouched,
into the endless sky.
But my guides, silent as they were,
never warned me
of the weight pressing down from above,
not from the heavens,
but from time itself.
Watches, clocks, everywhere I turned,
their faces circling me,
ticking, whispering of moments lost,
moments gained.
Each second stretched into eternity,
then snapped back,
pulling me through memories I never asked to revisit.
My consciousness, unmoored,
drifted back and forth,
through years, through faces,
through versions of myself
I had left behind or had yet to become.
Hair rose at the back of my neck as I wrote,
as if time itself
ran its fingers along my spine,
reminding me of what I could not outrun.
The ticking, louder now,
echoed in the quiet,
each beat a hammer,
each second a pulse I couldn’t ignore.
Then it all stopped –
there, in bold before my eyes,
TIME.
It pulsed, a force I could not escape,
binding me to this moment,
to the now –
the only thing that exists,
the only thing that matters.
The clocks surrounded me,
but no longer did they measure what was or what would be.
Time is now,
in the breath I take,
in the sound that fills the space between heartbeats,
in this single, powerful second
where the universe whispers,
and I listen.
