Carry Me Out

FOOTHOLD

Once. I was young once, and I wish to
Be an adult, once. Time like train ignored
The wind like bullet, and—wind: a futile
Force to stop things. Time too was both
The train and the wind and the bullet, it
Couldn't stop itself and it ignores
Itself, it was rather complex
And unlikable, but it was a verity of adamant
Foothold. A lost translation but already translated.
Clearer than a 20/20 vision, it was a fool,
'It' was me, I believed in time, draw all
My faith, my love, my trust. But like bones
My relationship with time grew weak; fraught
With rusts, came vulnerable. Though seconds
Were a trickle of canticles of playful tunes, it
Was merely desperate. Hums the bird sitting
On a wire, only to feel the rush of electricity
In its body, held its foot, killing it instantly.
The bird never did anything, but electricity
Was like time, irrevocable. And inevitable.
I would have stayed young, and I would
Have held my foot before the threshold,
So that in moments of dilemma, I would
Rather lock the door than step across
The threshold. I hated being away from my
Mother—I was never like her, I was not
Independent, I was a leech. I was not like
Her, alive and talkative, I was death. If
Only my feet were screwed to the redwood
Polished floor before the threshold, I
Could still look up to my mother,
But it was an ultimate curse that after
Stepping towards, the door
Had closed, and was locked.
I wasn't glad I had a foothold beneath
My feet, it didn't make me easily start
Another race. I was literally held to a foot
I couldn't move back nor forth
I just stayed in time that somehow slates a continuum of torment.