Within a Sky Full of Earth

"...and alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade..."


What really happened was
the typewriters and clocks
of her heart mutinied
at the exact same moment
of her grizzly discovery.

That's how she found herself
running down an abandoned
horse trot path
wondering at the typeface
of red graffiti
and finding herself without
words or face or hands
two hours later
the mutiny finally sank in.

In the months that followed
she took solace in tube socks
fruit stalls and umbrellas.
These, it seemed to her,
had discovered life
in the shade.

Certain places were avoided:
the fix-all shop
where a Ukranian immigrant
hovered tentatively
over timepieces
like they were precious to someone,
the undergrounds,
the mosques,
places where an invisible hand
shoved the righteous
and conscientious
into line.

She painted her twelve year old
tortoise royal purple
and glued a stone to his back:
a playful sun-dial
which soothed the terror
of daylight, a little.

Afterwards when people would ask
what went wrong she would say
"It wasn't Time that frightened me,
it was the awful machinery
behind it.
It needed reinventing."

-R.E.L.