On Time

You speak of time and of the wounds it allegedly heals.
You speak of grief as something that in time shall fade.
But isn’t time rather a rascal that reveals
the marks once etched by a savage blade
on tender skin? On your eye’s very membrane?
Isn’t time the tautening of a scar, thus urging you against motion,
the rent in the eye that drives you insane,
despair that fattens from pond to creek, to river, to ocean?

Time’s job is not to ease, but aggravate.
Time’s job is not to efface, but accentuate.
Time’s job is to create that perfect monster wave
that will flatten you against the sand.
So don’t you be deceived by that insidious knave: to him
We’re mere sheets of parchment to stab at with a vicious hand.