Riots in Reflection

Is our custodian of calm,

Time?

So elastic and plastic and thin.

Or is it purely a technique for keeping track

When we want something looking back?

Perhaps she’s a gentle nurse,

Tucking souvenir tickets into our pockets.

Tender times spent waiting with children,

Unwilling to urge them into any rat race

Or when I pulled you from beneath a truncheon

moments before it split open your girlish face

The day you wanted something from me but I gave you only words

Wasn’t it you who said it is time we grew up? With

Time a lighthouse blaring warnings of imminent rocky ruin.

Tumbling through hourglass figures to settle on the underside of our hips.

Scorching moist elastin into a salty dry skin that cannot be rubbed young.

Time never stretching languid again

nor preening in the heat wave of unlimited opportunity.

She’s truncating, cooling and separating,

Breaking us like flotsam floating away still.

My nemesis moving fast forward

Intent on her kill.