Twenty four

Twenty four...
At 24 I spent too much time counting and recounting the seconds in my head.
Fingers busy pecking up to 24
the core of me is adding up the hours
24 hours 
 Made of 60 minutes
 of 60 seconds
ticking away by the moment til you've got 24,
 a full day
24
One day
While sitting on the bus counting seconds on my fingers I realized something
Our perception of time changes with the speed of our minds
Somehow to some a second seems to drag by
while to others it is but a moment
And I can't help but think how that changes our lives.
Something we can never see nor prove
but it controls the beat we walk to
I can't help but wonder what it does to us
Well, Like a skinny boy has an easier time rising from his bed than the fat man
I
think some minds have an easier time biding aside from life and waiting in lines
Content in their short-slipping-seconds-sliding by
To waste is not a crime
I think some minds find that rough
each sandpaper second rubs them raw with waiting
Each tick
tick
tick
  Tick
        TICK TICK TICK Kills them
inside
They can't confide in their days because they haven't the time
To live or love or breathe or sigh
Eternity is rushing by

But What else does this little second stretching change. 
For some old memories seems fresher.
Seconds pass forgotten and unnoticed as they stare back with longing
sepia-toned shades gazing on Elysian Fields make everything warmer back there
when you take them off right now seems so cold 
and alone. 
Today is not their home 
Like the arms of others will never be home to those poor hearts that make each heartbreak feel like the earth
is cracking
             in two. 
How much of a difference can a second make? A second tries to repeat itself and will if you let it
leave you stuck on repeat and doomed to repeat your mistakes with a different set of lips pressed against yours.
Leave you beating moments into sores stored in your soul
Life is long
and when you fall the movie doesn't end
A second wind Hits you just before your body gives out

These moments never leave us
These things
they make our fears scream that seconds should be shorter.
and yet
It makes it clear to see that length is what we long for.
That we want to extend every little smile 
and frown 
as long as we can, 
Every second we wish could last a minute 
and it might if you let it.
People say life is short
Bullshit

Life is long
Just like a work shift is long
Ticking clocks and nightmares long
Agonizingly
endlessly
oppressively long
When you don't want be here
Ever since that night seconds have been longer
The minutes 60 full for one single hour
60 in each 60,
in each 24
Since that night when you were 24 And they
were no longer yours

I'm barely in my twenties
We spend twenty years in old age regretting

Can you imagine?

I can

Counting little seconds on my hands I stand in the enormity of these
Our merest moments
And their stretching