time

ticking along. counting milliseconds..can you see them? I can. I feel them in a porous orange peel, in the first citrus smell under my fingernail..how long it takes to make a cut through to the pulp, the heart. how long it takes to forget what you knew..milliseconds. can you feel a millisecond? Does it seem to last hours, days, years, this hope that takes less than a second to root itself into your skin, like some parasitic vine, grasping your limbs as it climbs, taking your heart, suffocating your lungs, killing your breath, till it explodes its life out your mouth in short gasps of vivid blooming desperation?

milliseconds. that's all it took for me to know you. a millennium will pass before one millisecond ends.