Time Loop
i.
I think I’ve been here before. I remember the absence from decades
later, a perpetual light from a long extinguished star.
This winter I’m relearning how to live without having people to
die for, though given half a chance I’d lie on train tracks for the stranger
who smiled at me on the subway, would –
ii.
I think I’ve been here before. I recognise the silence like I was the
first to stumble across yearning and give it a name.
Maybe I was, maybe I keep discovering it into existence again
and again, like a doomed pendulum swinging in hypnosis, begging to be
held and stopped for a moment of –
iii.
I think I’ve been here before. I’ve been breaking my heart along these
same cracks until they’re self-fulfilling prophecies.
You could read them like palm lines and see a reminiscence for
lifelong delusions, a longing for an imagined love with unconditional
specificity and miraculous mundanity and –
iv.
I think I’ve been here before. I fall to the floor at 27 but hear myself
hit the ground at 17, resigned and brazen blue.
And I’m crying about this now but I’ve cried about it before and
I can already hear myself crying about it from millennia away, a plaguing
echo soundtracking my every move until –
v.
I think I’ve been here before. I end each year with the same lightbulb
epiphanies and spend months forgetting them anew.
Like how are we all so united in our own separate un-lovings, separate
un-belongings, separate un-knowings and un-seeings and un-needings and
yet so unable to cross and close the distance of –
vi.
I think I’ve been here before. I think I’ve always been here, fleeing
from endings destined to become inescapable beginnings.
All the clocks are beating in reverse but it’s not enough to
take me back, not when time is an immortal circle spinning around my
head and God, I can’t accept a survival that never ends.
I think I’ll always be on my way here, rearranging the puzzle
pieces of my life and pretending there’s any other way they could fit,
giving in to every deceptive promise of a reality free of fate.
This is a very old story, one with an inherited emptiness as
my outline and a desperation to rewrite it until being known is more
than an invented memory, until –
I think I’ve been here before. I remember the absence from decades
later, a perpetual light from a long extinguished star.
This winter I’m relearning how to live without having people to
die for, though given half a chance I’d lie on train tracks for the stranger
who smiled at me on the subway, would –
ii.
I think I’ve been here before. I recognise the silence like I was the
first to stumble across yearning and give it a name.
Maybe I was, maybe I keep discovering it into existence again
and again, like a doomed pendulum swinging in hypnosis, begging to be
held and stopped for a moment of –
iii.
I think I’ve been here before. I’ve been breaking my heart along these
same cracks until they’re self-fulfilling prophecies.
You could read them like palm lines and see a reminiscence for
lifelong delusions, a longing for an imagined love with unconditional
specificity and miraculous mundanity and –
iv.
I think I’ve been here before. I fall to the floor at 27 but hear myself
hit the ground at 17, resigned and brazen blue.
And I’m crying about this now but I’ve cried about it before and
I can already hear myself crying about it from millennia away, a plaguing
echo soundtracking my every move until –
v.
I think I’ve been here before. I end each year with the same lightbulb
epiphanies and spend months forgetting them anew.
Like how are we all so united in our own separate un-lovings, separate
un-belongings, separate un-knowings and un-seeings and un-needings and
yet so unable to cross and close the distance of –
vi.
I think I’ve been here before. I think I’ve always been here, fleeing
from endings destined to become inescapable beginnings.
All the clocks are beating in reverse but it’s not enough to
take me back, not when time is an immortal circle spinning around my
head and God, I can’t accept a survival that never ends.
I think I’ll always be on my way here, rearranging the puzzle
pieces of my life and pretending there’s any other way they could fit,
giving in to every deceptive promise of a reality free of fate.
This is a very old story, one with an inherited emptiness as
my outline and a desperation to rewrite it until being known is more
than an invented memory, until –