The second hand does not circle.

It exhales deeply, resignedly some days

And vigorously others, into a plexiglass

Balloon—never pausing to catch a breath,

Never paling from the sanguine skin—the pressure

Beneath the chest climbs to the surface and

Leaps desperately through the whitecaps…

…a gasp of fresh air.

Time keeps the rhythm of Man’s heart, circumventing

Circadian polyrhythms; systolic sleep gives way to

Diastolic dreams and so on.

But what of the balloon?

Some are perfectly perforated; time diffuses

Freely. Some harden precociously and time

Counts down the days until a leathery lung pops,

Leaving an empty shell—a hairline crack in Hope.

But some remain molten and malleably moldless.

Ever expanding, they grow to swallow the earth.

Some are opaque: it takes the voices of millions

To shatter them, to reclaim the sun. Some are

Transparent: they bend the rays, dispersing them

With magnanimity and intensity, keeping

Our tress growing tall and our eyelids pinned open.

The air that we breathe and the air

That we put on alike will change ceaselessly,

Until Time can huff and puff no more.