We center our lives around hands that circle around endlessly, from three to twelve and nine to eleven. Day and night, it dances to its own heartbeat of rushed harmonies and hollow clicks. We are only given a specific amount of time with each other, limited revolutions around the sun- and it is never certain. That’s the terrifying thing about it, that time is never guaranteed.
We cannot control what will happen between five and six. We will never know how the next sunrise will look but we expect it anyway, in its radiant magenta hue of six AMs that can never be reincarnated.
Each day, life begins a new cycle of magic, the melody of pink-faced newborn babies screaming shrill cries of disapproval and utter confusion. Life will also cease to exist in the same day. Gray wrinkles and hands that have created and lived and thrived will morph into the hands of the clock they once lived by. And time will end, their hearts beating in sync with the monotone ticking of diminishing time. It is an unexplainable, powerful enigma that we will not ever begin to understand. Time is our only mystery, the substance that fills the gaps between life and death in order to conquer beauty and the power of it.
It is uncertain,
it is terrifying,
brilliant, dissolving and irreplaceable.
Today, someone will fight back waves of tsunami tears, eyes watering as they watch their bright-eyed blushing daughter walk down the aisle in her dream wedding dress. Someone will take their last breath on earth and exhale a life of both regret and contentment. Someone will take their first, inhaling hope and promises that will only swell and envelope them over time.
Someone has just tasted the sickeningly sweet taste of first love, with fingertips like bolts of lightning and a heart like a frightened alley cat, unsure and vulnerably afraid. And just around the corner, someone has just watched love fade away with empty arms and a burnt tongue, watching it disappear slowly- the way sugar dissolves into water and becomes absolutely nothing at all.
This morning, someone will hold their innocent baby boy swaddled in blue hospital garments- and blink- only to find him walking proudly across the stage, towering over everyone in his indigo cap and gown. A child will gaze up at their loving, sprightly mother only to lose track of time and suddenly will find themselves staring down at a platform resting in lonely cemetery grass.
Time is an insane concept, of waiting and rushing and the routine hum of life while we hope for a reality better than this. In times of crisis and in times of unbreakable power, time is the only insane concept that has ever possessed the capability to keep us sane.
Time is not infinite, nor is it fleeting, but with each thump, click, and tick, we are given chance after chance to shed the skin of the past and become brand new all over again.
We are only given a specific amount of minutes. To laugh. To cry. To kiss. To smile.
What will you do with yours?

If there is one thing I won’t ever forget,
it’s the feeling of almost.
The overwhelming sensation of wanting to cradle love in my hands like a newborn child and craving desperately to grasp it with a resilience that echoed in a prism of colors that screamed
“I will never let you go.”

But he always seemed to slip through the spaces between my fingers, as if he had a soul coated effortlessly with butter. Gentle enough to allow me to graze my fingertips against it, never vulnerable enough to let me in.

With time I’ll forget the rush of flailing helplessly into the depths of his eyes. I’ll forget the numbness I felt tracing imaginary pathways down the curvature of his spine, backroads along the ridges of his hands. I’ll forget feeling the closest I’ve ever been to flying, as if I’ve been tied down to a railroad and freed just seconds before my potential demise. I’ll forget the resonance of our favorite songs and the slam of back doors and how none of it even mattered when I was with him. We were relative, limitless, the kind of unrequited love that leaves your knees shaking, your breath stuck in your throat, a permanent cycle of bracing for impact.

But loving him wasn’t enough. I craved an understanding that always felt unfulfilled at dusk, always being left with emptiness and an ever-growing gap that felt incomplete. I wasn’t flying, I was falling. I wasn’t loving, I was chasing. I let him memorize the way I liked my tea and the titles of the books that I could reread over and over again until I realized that the best parts of me had been given away to a stranger. The shadow of a person I thought I knew, but only ever understood a fraction of. An enigma. A lonely intrigue. Another almost.

I’ll forget the silent scream that reverberated in my throat when I realized that he could look at me and feel nothing at all. An absence. A wasted chance. An impending goodbye. I’ll forget everything except our last exchange of glances and the pivotal decision I made to change my promise of “I will never let you go” to “I almost loved you.” The moment I decided to leave behind our masterpiece, our canvas of watercolor love now left to ruin in the rain.

-m.g. “Almost”

I am holding my breath for you,
underwater, with an expanse of indigo
or perhaps, blue velvet,
enveloping me within miles
of motionless serenity

I do not mind my own inability
to breathe,
lungs stagnant, sleeping-
with the world around me frozen
and patiently waiting
for my skin to break the surface

I am drowning in love for you,
stomach filling with both
fear and tranquility, serrated
heartbeats stifled by
my own inconstant drifting

sometimes it comes in waves,
storms,
drought,
devastation,
other times it burns
the tips of my fingers charcoal,
smothered in ash from the heat

but today I am sinking slowly,
overwhelmed, ocean bottom
but yet I do not mind

I love you so deeply
it consumes me.