The second diffuses

There is, there, a deep sadness at the fragility of the sense of being.

At each second slipping away.

At generations rising and falling and fading away into sepia-toned memories, known only by stories and thumb-worn phrases repeated with laughter over the dinner table.

There was a life I was meant to live. In the forest, hearing the rain patter through the leaves. Feeling the sun begin to bathe the damp moss in its touch. Barefoot. The village has yet to wake. There are mushrooms to gather in the quiet morning light. The air is heavy with rain and the first birdsong and the slow, ever so slow, passing of time (not a ticking, but an overflowing, falling gently over the edge). Time holds my breath and exhales it through the pores in the saplings and crumbling soil.

There was a life I was meant to live, standing poised beneath the gnarled trees, alert to every sensation. Thunder sneaks back from the days to come and runs along the hairs on my arm.

There, every second swells, entire worlds crystallizing inside. Order, and chaos, and love, and grief, and birth, and acceptance, arrange and rearrange themselves in the shifting structure; then disintegrate as the membrane becomes too thin to distinguish from the air around it. An exhale; the second diffuses, taking with it lifetimes of ache and memories, and then a new second begins.

The moments are pulled from my throat, voice empty, crying out soundlessly for what has already dissipated.