Hourglass

Hourglass

With memories so tangibly concrete—Salty spray in our hair, waves lapping at our 

feet—The mind may effortlessly recall, nebulous chemicals recreating every 

instant of the fall, revisiting each moment of blissful simplicity, escaping to 

nostalgic electricity; our minds at peace, our hearts at ease, your eyes alight 

in the ocean breeze, a moment apart from life’s cruel demand, 

hand-in-hand, with feet buried in the sand, our slender 

silhouettes set against the setting sun like two 

hourglasses, straining to stop the sliding sand 

with every moment that passes …

But time is just a formless measure
of distance, and if distance makes
the heart grow fonder, then across
hour after hour I would wander 

to retain even a grain of 

that tranquil serenity,

that bliss that exists 

not in form 

but in memory: 

though with each 

self-indulgent pass, I find 

that every hour is made of glass, 

and they crack and fracture with every grain 

of sand that slips past, threatening to burst and spill 

their contents of infinity, and every hour turns to days 

and days to years, until a sea of sand separates you from me.

So the memory alters with each pass I make through, and the first 

thing I note that is missing is you; then the breeze dissipates as I wander 

in wait, and the sunset and shore are too much for my mind to recreate, and 

what once was a haven is now arid and barren: a loveless desert whose sands ensnare, whose limitless horizon harbors not the promise of possibility, but whose glassy walls reflect only my own despair, and the deeper within the sands I sink, the smaller the glassy walls shrink until I’m crushed within the narrow nexus of what lay ahead, trapped, captive within my own head, and just when it seems that all is lost … it ends; I land softly on my feet in the opposite sands, and an upside-down existence without you begins.