You Are Time

Time didn't lose you —

you lost time,

somewhere between

who you were at midnight

and who you had to be

by morning.

*

We measure life in hours

but live it in moments —

a laugh that came from nowhere,

a hand held in a hallway,

a light that found you

exactly when you needed

to be found.

*

The clocks keep their agreements.

They do not negotiate.

But you —

you have bent entire seasons

around a single memory,

stretched one afternoon

into a lifetime of warmth,

compressed years of ordinary

into the sharp edge

of one unbearable loss.

*

So who is really keeping time?

Not the clocks.

Not the calendars

with their tidy little boxes.

*

It is you —

with your chaos,

your devotion,

your stubborn refusal

to let certain moments die.

*

You are the only timekeeper

that ever mattered.

Every second you remember

lives forever.

Every love you carry

never really left.

*

You are not running out of time.

You are time —

wild, irreversible,

becoming.

******