Sometimes I feel as though time has stopped moving
I know that it never really stops
That time moves as regularly as it can
But
Moments linger
They lag and rip and jostle
Stretch out like taffy in a candy stores window on a boardwalk
They have a tendency to stick around long past the expiration date
I know
Somewhere in the factual portion of my brain
That each second is uniform
One sixtieth of a minute and one thirty-six hundredth of an hour
Exact concrete absolute
Measured just the same
As if I can’t lose everything
In that same second
That was
At one time or another
As uniform and bland as all the others.

I sit at an angle facing the window.
Morning sunlight staggers in and tumbles onto the table.
It seems to be as relaxed as I am this early in the day.
I sit and I smile.
A lazy smile.
It sits as easy as I do.
My mind starts to wander, the way it only does just after sleep.
The hazy connection-forming sort of way that must be closely related to dreaming.
I find myself thinking of a summer years ago.
Not a particular event from that summer.
Just that summer in general.
How it was to be a kid then, with that set of friends.
Care-free, or relatively so.
Only ever attempting to locate trivial entertainment.
A band of kids, a sworn allegiance long since faded into the great collective memory.
A bird flits across the sky outside my window.
I shake myself, that smile I found so effortless now gone.
I think “been a long time, wonder how everyone is?”
The moment broken, I stand up and walk out of the room.

My mind wanders continuously
                 To and from the hear and now
Seemingly
  I don’t pay attention to what you say
    Not true
       I do, in a way
But thank you for talking at me
  When you thought I couldn’t hear
    
     Because the rhythm of your psychoses wears upon my soul
Weathering me
Not like the sapphire waves beating on a jagged coastline wearing a mighty cliff into the humblest grain of sand
Or anything quite that dramatic
                    More like the way subtle occurrences can effect ones perception so powerfully
And while I’m floating along
  From one island of idea to another
     I’m tethered to reality
        By the ironic lifeline of your madness.