XVI. Time is Badly Made.

I am by the bench

with the arm broken off.

Clutching a scarf

that smells like someone

I almost became,

I pause.

Then start again.

A flicker, maybe—

caught in the corner

of someone else’s remembering.

You passed me yesterday—

I think.

Or someone who wore

your certainty

like a coat

they forgot to take off.

The rhythm of your steps

brushed against a belief

I’d stopped holding

in the present tense.

You didn’t see me.

You wouldn’t have known how.

The light broke differently

for both of us

that day.

...

I’m still by the bench

with the arm broken off.

Not seated—just near.

Long enough

to be mistaken

for waiting.

The paint flakes

like pages left

too long in the sun.

A pigeon nests beneath it—

as if permanence

were proximity,

as if warmth and ruin

were the same being.

I’ve been here

through weather

language couldn’t bear to name.

Sun that blistered

corners of thought.

Rain that fell

like apology

whispered too late.

Fog that pressed

into a mind

already losing its shape.

Once,

in a café with no windows—

no clocks, either,

if memory serves—

you touched my hand

and said,

"Time is badly made."

And I nodded,

because by then

I’d already started

to come unstitched.

I think I left my voice there.

Or the part of it

that could answer

lightly,

that could be joyful

without trembling.

...

I am still by the bench—

with its arm broken off—

still holding that scarf,

frayed now at the edges.

The scent is fainter—

yet it remains

enough to tilt me inward.

I came here

to try again—

to re-enter a sentence

I stepped out of

mid-word.

To breathe

into a shape

I once abandoned

to survive.

To be seen

without being summoned.

Do not look for me.

Do not look for me.

Please—

look for me not.

You ask where I’ve been.

You mean well.

You speak with

the tender suspicion

reserved for

the not-quite-missing.

You offer coffee

like it’s an anchor.

Gesture toward light

that won’t touch

the place I’m in.

You say I’ve been quiet.

You search my face

like it once held a door

you could still

knock on.

I’ve lived whole years

in the space of almost—

a geography unmapped,

a season

that never quite ends.

And should I rise,

it would only be hollow.

I have nothing left

to bring into a room.

But I remain

by that bench,

the one with its broken arm.

Still here.

Still fading.

Held not by place,

but by the failure

to fully vanish.

Nearly sitting.

Nearly gone.

As if the bench

might name me,

if nothing else would.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.