12 Minutes Later

Sometimes you can't be taken. Now matter how hard they pull. The grasshopper and the ant debating again the distribution of virtue. Maybe you're wrong. Yea, you probably are. And you hope someday they'll prove it. All that's left to decide is which one you are. Ant or grasshopper.

Uninterested or afraid to go.

It probably doesn't matter. They won't ask again.

So you're free to stay. Tracing the dust in the air until memories relent. And give you a glimpse of what isn't there anymore.

Turning over my pencil. Flirting with the other end. The eraser. A wooden stake against this vampire's chest.

Perhaps to turn it all to dust. As if it had never found the ends of my fingers. Never broken free from the prison of my skin. And remained only clouds in a sky not really there. Rain not fallen.

I don't feel wrong. Just have never felt right. All my life shrouded in a nausea that has no origin. All my loves smothered in a mild hangover.

As if I was never really there. And kept hoping someone would notice.

No one did.

I'd rely on myself if that were an option.

12 minutes later none of it mattered. 12 minutes gone by and we were strangers. Looking for our keys. Backing out of already empty parking spaces.

Cause that's what we agreed to when we signed up for this chance.