Dear Time

Dear Time,

Could you stop, maybe?

Or just slow down a little?

I’m sorry to be a pain,

I’m just a little scared is all.

Is that normal, time?

I suppose everyone fears you at some point.

Is that lonely, time?

I just want to grab you my the seams and make a moment stretch a lifetime.

A moment in the backseat of my friends car;

While it’s dark;

Listening to our favourite songs;

Watching the blurry lights of nearby towns pass by.

But I’m already melancholy in that moment,

Scared that it’s about to pass.

I want to stay twenty forever, sitting in the back of my best friends car.

No, wait.

I want to be twelve again.

Will there ever again be such a feeling as being twelve.

Running through fields of shin length grass on a cool summer evening.

When your cousins were your best friends,

And time seemed limitless.

Was being twelve really so whimsical?

Or does looking through the scope of nostalgia filter my memory.

Wait.

Can I go back to being 15?

I’d like to apologise to my parents.

I want to tell them they’re doing such a great job and I appreciate them so damn much.

I want to tell them that at twenty they won’t be able to get rid of me,

I want to hold them close forever.

Scared how time will treat them.

Will I always be twelve and fifteen and twenty all at once?

Will I always be a nest of Russian dolls,full of past selves, yearning for a different time?

Will there always be a twelve year old girl at the pit of my core screaming to be coddled and careless?

I know it isn’t your fault, Time.

You have to keep going,

and us with you.

But, if I may,

Could you please be gentle?

Yours eternally,

A slave to time.