Ownership of Time

Many are gathered around the box on which you stand.You are speaking so I assume you have something to say.How long have I been here, the dogs are lying down.I ask this of the woman standing to my left; she doesn't turn to face me, her earsare stopped with the cork of your voice.Because she can barely hear you.She has to lean in.To the air in front of her, which is supposed to be reservedfor the future, which cannot enter the body.In any other way.They are all leaning in.Each row with their heads bowed as though they are prayingto the row in front of them.But they aren't, they are trying to hear you.Finish the sentence you started when you left your mother's womb.The one you believe deserves to be listened to.The one that won't end until the period is reachedat the end of your life.But it is our life sentence.To wait for what might come afterthese introductory clauses you continue to unspool.The anticipation of a dependent clause threaded between and around us.Tethering us in place.I feel it spun around my body, smooth as spider's silkand equally as strong.But it loosens when I try to turn away.There is a whole lifetime's worthof daylight resplendent with truth behind us.A whole afternoon with family at the beach everyone laughing and becalmedand feeling a sense of rightness for a change's worth of sand on the wind. Each grain a finger tapping our shoulders.And still no one diveststheir attention of you.Why do I assume you've allowed me to turn away.Do you want me to return home to tell of your benevolenceso that you become myth, a token I'd pressinto the hand of the child nearest my deathbed.Saying, Take this, it might appear a small thing but long ago I was given the chanceto turn away so I could raise youinto the child who would receive this.My child's hand unfurling from her armlike a tongue onto which I'd place a sacrament.In the intervening years I would pass the square where still you would bespeaking and find birds had nested in hairand in the upturned hoods of many a winter's coat.I would want for them to want for water.But their not-wanting would be a sign your words were water enough.To keep them hydrated.To form droplets at their mouth-corners.And though I would've turned from you, I would never be able to turn from myself.The guilt that I had abandoned the others.I would put distance between myselfand the light perched above the driveway of my guilt,hoping the motion sensor would forget me.But it never would.I would always be facing you,which is why I now turn back.A life must be believed it can be lived another wayin order for a life to be lived.