my timepiece

i hate watches. i find them confining and the whole wrist thing, claustrophobic. but the other day, i found what i thought might be a solution: a time piece - kind of like what rappers and grandpas wear, except smaller. and i'm so happy with it i wear it all the time. but now i realized it's not just the wrist thing that i find confining. something about time itself makes me claustrophobic.

(my obsession with peter pan continues) a recurring scary theme in my childhood stemmed from watching the disney version of peter pan and wendy. when the crocodile swallowed the clock and started tick-tocking every time he was approaching, i was traumatized. i associated everything that was out to get me with the sound of "tick-tock." i would run around (fleeing was more like it) hoping to get to "safety" in time or be caught... all while chanting tick-tock-tick-tock. in fact, if i heard that from someone now, i'd still get the chills.

i wrote this "not poem so much as random stream of thoughts that i felt like typing as i went along this little portion of time." i realize it's corny and appears to attempt depth, thus betraying its shallowness, but i've been feeling so ridiculous by the fact that i can't keep track of time/ been slightly obsessed with the idea of time - that i'm putting it here anyway - and i realize me not putting it up is more a sign of insecurity than me leaving it out --because in honesty, i'm afraid of being caught with something so trite. perhaps this paragraph for a few lines of what i've called "nonpoetry" even reveals that insecurity.

i wear a "timepiece" around my neck.
yet i'm still always just a bit late.
am i chasing You or are You chasing me?

Yesterday I set the clock 6 minutes forward in hopes that that will help
but today, instead of 5 minutes late
i've become 11 minutes late.

i hold the timepiece in my hands
and the minutes
continue
t o
sl i p
through,
rising up again to drown me

or maybe i'm floating,

or treading,

either way, it moves us all forward

when i just want to be somewhere


"this moment contains all moments" -lewis