I glance at my watch

time is quickly forgotten

unimportant to the task

I look more for aesthetics

stoke my pride

a date portrait sits in its hole

time’s trapdoor enlarged

the cyclops eye

 

I remember this

 

the seconds hand

a wicket

a hair

a blear

gliding by

also magnified

barely visible then gone

 

uninterrupted flow concentrates into the bloom of a ruptured moment

tomorrow

my Birthday

 

I think about another one reluctantly

the sapphire mirrors my reflection,

it reminds me

etchings in the chrome plaque trophy spilling accolades

the brash hills

victory landing a warrior pose

just how short-lived forests spawn old-growth muscle

everything pressed against my door,

holding back a glance of time

poured into painful cupped-palms of sacred water.

Time doesn’t droop like skin,

it mimics a scaled being

failing to hold plasma in its veins

turning into coral fixtures

a curiosity abandoned by time

puffing the engine

spinning the turnstile

to the holder of another year

time becomes everything and nothing

erect in its barbed and painful slants

the date’s black figure

stares back,

carved on its bone-white background

holding up the weight of what didn’t last.