lucid drift
*I tried to heal by standing still,
as if pain would pass like a fever chill.
But sorrow is not a weathered storm—
it is stone, it is weight, it takes its form
in the hush of rooms that once held laughter,
in the hollow echo echoing after.
Time is no healer—
it's a thief in silk,
slipping past with breathless grace or guilt.
It never pauses for the broken or brave;
it just keeps moving, wave after wave,
while we tread water
with lungs full of ache,
trying to swallow what we cannot take.
I reached for it once—
the second’s hand.
It sliced my palm like a blade of sand.
I cupped hours in both trembling fists
and watched them drip
like cold-blooded mist.
I said I was better,
just to hear it out loud,
but healing is not a bandage or shroud.
It is a wound with no scab, no skin,
a scream that folds itself within,
a door you pass through every day
pretending you meant to walk that way.
And here I am—
the same old scar
looking for where the good years are.
They said I’d forget,
but memory clings—
a ghost with claws and borrowed wings.
So don’t tell me time will stitch me clean.
I’ve lived in the seams
of what might have been.*
solid granite
marble atlas
