A Miser of Time

One day, twenty four hours.
One thousand, one hundred and forty
Strikes of a little hand.
It becomes forty three thousand, two hundred ticks
And just as many tocks.
The numbers are baffling to me,
The time and space required to assess the numerous,
Fleeting moments
But there just isn’t enough of it in one day, twenty four hours,
Et cetera, et cetera.
Seconds in clock faces
Grains in hourglasses
They feel so immaterially material
And monetary.
It’s like these pennies and cents
Are being stolen from my blind eyes
Whether it’s sleep, school,
Music, work, play, it’s all idle nonsense.
It’s slipping through my grasp, these sands and cents.
I am stealing myself from sleep
And taking deposits from the future, to avoid my present affairs.
I have become a curmudgeon, a miser
At 16 years of age and barely a cent, in both senses, to my name.
My fingers groan in exasperated protest, every passing day turning them
Ever more chronically tight.
And soon, these hands, wrinkling alarmingly
Will become too tight to open,
And close again
To keep a grip on the things around me
And of the dollars and dimes and grains
I had been clenching so hungrily at first.