Seven and Twenty-Seven / time like memory

[memory] is what happened.
[memory] is a poem i once wrote.
[memory] is a poem that then writes me.

and visceral fantasy / dwelling in the reality of previous / our former selves staring at us / some dead, some forgotten, some writing love letters / "to your ego at twenty-four" / who says we can only give advice to our children / we can write letters to our future selves / if we would heed them when the time comes anyway / advice is cheap (and forgotten) no matter by whom / knowing my foibles, i don't think i'd take myself any more seriously at seven than twenty-seven / i'd look back and laugh at my naive insanity all the same.

funny though, how we haven't words for future besides future / but we have adjectives, nouns, verbs for what has come before / previous, former, past, ago; future, future, future, future / frevious, perhaps, fast is taken, the verb 'will be' / funny how 'will' suggests determinism sometimes / not everyone would agree we have a choice.

i am obsessed with time and the notion of clocks / tiny time pieces ticking destiny in regular motion / i didn't think time slipped by in seconds but we need some way of counting i suppose / like a metronome keeping rhythm when the fact is i am out of tune. / did you think we'd need a watch other than to meet the time to meet each other by? / these days i take to meeting you whenever / a location and an uncertain hour (you are always late anyway) / and if you are meant to be there then perhaps you will be / (and i will break up with whoever i unfortunately never managed to meet). / these days, late means time has passed and i learn to expect you two minutes after / and late to me becomes the endless waiting for someone who will never then arrive / a truly late. and perhaps then "the late mr darcy" takes on more significance than someone who is simply held up by traffic.

i just got myself a watch. / and not just a watch. / a very expensive watch / a watch that i'd wanted since i was 17.

it was the gift i'd rejected at 18, yearned for at 21, and finally got - at 27. i'd gotten it to honour a memory, and as memory-serves, memory now honours me. it's the same memory, only different - mirror imaged. the giver and not the given reversed.

do you wonder if you would know if something you've been waiting for has arrived? when the moment steals by, unspoken, unknown, unannounced?

lately i've been staring at shadows.