XVII. 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.

...

Still near the bench

with the arm broken off.

Not seated,

just lingering.

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 stood 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."

I nodded.

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.

...

Still near the bench.

Still the arm, broken.

The scarf's more thread than fabric now.

The scent is fainter,

yet it remains

just enough

to tilt me inward.

I came here

to try again—

to re-enter a sentence

I stepped out of

mid-word.

To breathe

back into the outline

of someone I left behind

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 reach

the place I’m in.

You say I’ve been quiet.

You study my face

like it once held a door

you believe

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 if I rose,

it would only be hollow.

I have nothing left

to bring into a room.

Still here,

by that bench.

What's left of it.

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.