Time or Something Like It

 

It's a big, wide open field. Alone. Night. Frustrations and stars above and distant. Your smallness is clear. In it, maybe wisdom. But mostly you feel alone. you are sure if you only turned to your left or right, you would be able to remember a story that would help make ithis make sense. Crickets are chirping, and something in the horizon moves, and you want the loneliness to feel good. It moves again, but it doesn't. Maybe if you walk toward it.

It's more like floating. Maybe you're sick. Oh, a dream. That must be it. But you can't remember your fingers being this cold asleep. It doesn't matter. A small, nostalgic sting as you leave your spot for new ground. You've done this before, or at least that's the feeling. The new space you enter, the way the old one ages without you. Things die when you leave them. But you always leave. You want every option at once. Impossibility itself. You are a part of neither, just the space in between, like calling the airport home.

The distance you approach on the horizon isn't made of space. That much feels true. You're drifting from even your own thoughts, as they become part of the left behind. The distance you approach is made of time, or something like it. You feel too old to reach it in time. You've been here for so long, but the music has always been nice and has never stopped, but now, for the first time, it has stopped.

"New music." you say, first words in a long time.

But all you hear are your own feet, anyone's else's feet, shuffling toward the dark with the bravery of a child.

Murmur turn
Ascend and enter
All at once

Yes, things are falling around you. You've felt alone before, but not like this. Things are falling from you. Words like Earth and Dimension and Starfield seem more intimate now, less cliche. World, City, Time Zone are bougeous. You know you've changed, or the world has.

You are now landscape to everyone you have ever known, lover and family included.
Why is it all so distant? The question you wish made sense.
But this, too, just bubbles to the surface and is released into the night.
Just words coupled and offered in fear. They have no place.
Not here.
Not for you.
Not now.