Time Passes

Time passes
Even for one such as me, it passes.

My raw skin burns
As it creeps over me like a stale fog
Pressing down on my chest like a dead weight, moulding itself
To my bones.
My lungs catch on themselves, cannot fill for fear of ripping
Until I forget, forget how to breathe.
Time locks them shut,
Keeping me from the heavy air I hang in,
And then;
Stops.
I wait, chest bleeding, for the world to move again.
I settle into my dust
And watch the world drift around me.
Sounds are slower
Blurred, as if letters and words are one.
Until
Suddenly
Time surges forward
And I am left
Wandering
My thoughts belonging to a moment now gone.
I run to catch up, labouring past whole hours
Days
Seconds.
My body pretends to sleep
But my mind races with broken moments
Fragments of thoughts,
With dreams so sweet they leave my tongue thick and bitter,
All the more painful in the morning.

Time grinds on around me,
Until my thoughts begin to rust
And grate against the inside of my head.
I am pulled along by currents that creep forward
With crippling, crippling power.

The past follows, pulling and plucking at me
Leaving purple hearts across my skin
That I brush my fingers against,
But cannot remember getting.
Time settles again,
And the currents drop me.

I find myself
Bruised and broken
On the bathroom floor
My faces against the tiles wet with salt tears.
My hand resting on a photograph
Of the person you once were.