Losing Time

The red balloon drags behind me. Hours pull on loose string and the thing unravels and floats back with a blue grey tide, with the sea sand and shells and the blue green weeds that once swayed on the sea floor. Later, they will wash up on shore, brittle and brown.

And it has gone on course, of course. I bloomed. But loose flesh hangs and my rough pink palms rub a scabbed scalp and thick but fragile and sparse grey white hairs sprout from my ears. And the red balloon my mother tied around my wrist is a pinprick pulled away by waves, a pilotless vessel at the mercy of the moon.

--A little ditty I wrote a few weeks ago. Short, and about time and old people (apparently two of my favorite things to write about lately).