Time Lost Love

by Charissa Pereira

I want the fullness of each second, of every minute, 

to stay

to sit

softly

On the tips of my fingers. 

Waiting for my permission to leave,

to disappear, into the past,

To cede way for future hours to become my present.

But they do not sit, they speed forward hungrily,

past my outstretched hands.

I feel time run the race ahead of me. 

Little quarks of physical atoms tick-tocking 

the ruddiness of my cheeks into a memory,

the soul spark of my eyes into past years

made up of the hours who refused to stay.

The minutes who were more in love 

with what was after-

than what was before.

I reach into my reflection,

Trying to pull back the pieces of time,

now lost, 

which made room for the lines of lack my face now holds.

Sweet seconds, of mere minutes, who sing of hours,

Can you re-visit the curves of my cheeks?

And the fullness of my lips?

“We have gone sister, we have left”. 

Sing the days, of the months, in the years

Who have turned umber to gray,

Who have birthed colored marks from once smooth skin

that’s now stretched 

from the footsteps

of heavy years

relentlessly pounding its pavement 

of cartilage and bone.

A time-filled tear escapes a tired eye, 

spoken from an eternally youthful heart-

who tries desperately to match the steady cadence 

of time’s relentless dance,

of love 

for a place

where we can never meet.