There is no time now.
So many of my poems start
with "when", like a manual
prescribing actions or words or
emotions to situations, like a clock
to tick away the lines, all straight, all
parallel, in neat rows, like the answer
to a question I always ask but never
speak, what will happen to me now?

There is no time now.
Now, there is only me, even
my words have gone to play in
greener pastures as my ghosts desert
me to haunt someone less
picked-over, to find a carcass that still
has meat on its bones. I am
bone-dry. I lost the companionship
of my tears long ago.

There is no time now.
Though I know it is midnight, that
fact does not seem to matter as much
as facts should. The darkness is
simultaneously vast and stifling, I am
simultaneously too old and too young. There exists
a longing, I cannot be certain what for, I
know only that it is unrelenting and threatens to
pull me out of my skin. I might not mind.