Time

“I don’t have the time.” “Don’t waste my time.” “Spend your time wisely.” when did time become mine? yours? ours? to fritter away or stretch out or shorten into a breath or hold in our calloused hands and toss it around or ask for or beg to stop or change at all? we do not own time but, ironically, time does not own us either. yes it may feel like it when seconds drip slower than the sink faucet you have yet to fix hours may seem to fly by when your dreams are trapped behind eyelids it may feel that your back is being arched and pushed forward by Time’s fingernails along your spine but you are not. your hands can remain by your sides instead of stretched out in hopeless or in some cases hopeful necessity you may walk on a crowded sidewalk and feel no rush at all except for the ends of frantic sentences and blanketed requests asking Mr. Time for a favor. for the old, wise man that he is Mr. Time is a terrible conversationalist he has no patience or sympathy but he has no temper and makes no hasty judgments and more than anything he does not want you he does not want to own you. what does it mean to own something anyways does it mean you have tamed it? it exists for you and you exist for it? taming something is a tricky business it is not wrapping it around your pinky finger and tying it with a lacy bow chaining it to the white picket fence you built around that tin roof house with the red front door it is not taking a paintbrush to the edges to blur the lines where it stopped and you began no taming someone is not an ephemeral satisfaction it is not changing it is not shaping it is not questioning it is one wild thing belonging to another wild thing although here’s the danger with wild things the more you love them the more clearly they see a cage the cage of steel bars low ceilings indefinite captivity no. do not give your heart to wild things do not treat them as you would a tame thing instead see the glow around them behind them in front of them wild beauty is the brightest of them all the hardest to measure and the easiest to lose track of and that is why we cannot own time because Mr. Time does not want your company wild things cannot be loved and there are only so many coincidences one breath can ask for.