The now slips out  
before it ever settles
a shadow flinching from the light  
that dared to call it real.  

Breath, halfway drawn,  
becomes the exhale  
of a world already changed.  
Clocks don’t tick here
they vanish.  

This moment?  
It’s moss on a comet.  
Ash of a word mid-whisper.  
You reach
and it’s the reaching  
that’s left behind.  

Time doesn’t wait,
not because it’s cruel,  
but because it can’t remember  
how to pause.  

We speak of “present”  
as if it unwraps,  
but it never arrives.  
It only disrobes  
into “before we spoke”  
and “after we felt.”  

What you felt:
already echo.  
What you knew:
already myth.  
What you are:
already becoming.