Time as a concept
becomes especially troubling
once it makes itself known.
Now you’re against the clock.
All progress a single
stuttered step
from falling apart.
Brutalist landscapes
masquerading as a bioluminescent,
science-fiction sentient beings.

Unfortunately the clock,
is ticking.
Hours go by the past
increases the future
recedes. Possibilities
decreasing regrets
mounting.
Do you understand?

When it all burns,
as I assure you it will,
every empty office lobby
and husk of window looking down
from tender jagged tenement towers
will pour rivulets of ash across
broken bricked sidewalks
like crawling fingers of lace.

Only the mosquitos will remain unchanged.
Spilling deftly from the same canals as each
and every brood
to have ever come before.
Nipping the skin of those left behind,
to sing the names of the dead
into the corn seeds scattered hopefully
in cold air.