Between Then and Now

The clock unwinds—

I find you in the silence of a future yesterday,

where words we have yet to speak

linger like shadows on the wall.

I remember the moment before we met

the empty room waiting to be filled,

the breath held tight inside a chest

not yet acquainted with your name.

You smile across a table,

though the chairs are still stacked in the corner

and the paint on the walls has yet to dry.

Rain falls softly in the evening that has already passed,

washing away footprints

I have not yet made.

Our hands touch—

a spark igniting in a time not yet written,

sending ripples backward

through memories I have yet to live.

I hear your voice in the quiet before dawn,

before the sun has risen,

before the night has even fallen.

The letter you never sent arrives in my inbox,

its ink still wet with the promise of regret

that has not yet settled into the heart.

Somewhere between the blink of an eye and a sigh,

I hold the weight of things undone,

of apologies borrowed from a tomorrow

that refuses to come.

We say goodbye before hello,

parting ways on a road that folds in on itself,

leading nowhere yet everywhere at once.

In the stillness,

I find the pieces of us scattered across

a timeline that bends,

loops, and breaks

not broken, merely rearranged,

so that love can live

outside the prison of seconds.

And in this fractured dance,

we find ourselves

not lost, but found

in the spaces between time.

Time, unbound

a canvas splattered with moments

not in order,

but in meaning.