time lately has not felt like the deposition of sediment,
discrete layers upon layers of solid rock.
it does not stretch horizontally in continuous lines,
and red bands of iron do not speak any chronologies.
time is not a repository of days to be sorted and probed.

no.

time is a jumbled sludge of ice and snow.
it is melted and refrozen, worn away and replenished over and over
so that tomorrow’s anxieties seep into today’s panic,
and the next day’s dread gets tracked through the front door
by yesterday’s dirty boots.
the soles are stained from all the errors
i accumulate but cannot scrub out.

my whole world looks like television static –
a blizzard of chaotic sameness,
deafening but indiscernible,
a nothingness moving too fast.
i am scattered in all directions,
frantically moving nowhere.

i look from the desk where i live
at the clock on my laptop screen,
the substitute sun i revolve around.
i note another 24 hours spent busy but unproductive,
compiling endless questions and failing to find answers.

when i let myself sleep, i am met
with visions of blank documents.
i dream of sentences attempted
and promptly wiped clean,
black text vanishing beneath
a sheet of unforgiving snow.