Distance Over Time: Part Five

 Distance Over Time

Part Five

I stole him from his grave. Dying, he was mine. Alive he was a stranger.

I spent him in nickels and blood. Some worthless war that wasn’t anyone’s to win.

We chased the scent of hunger. Wolves shedding our sheep skins.

Still, I never left this box.

Time raged on, in spite of us.

My machine idled. Content to linger in the gaps between the marrow and the muscle.

Many ends arrived and vanished. As the hours stuck their needles into our veins. Cunning spiders patient enough to wait for their prey to come to them.

Time laid its stitches. But we had tied too many knots in the thread.
Our flesh erupted in a chaos of unrealized choices.

But my machine remained unconvinced. As it slouched forward in its delirious orbit.

We stumbled along its tenuous trajectory. Chewing on every connection.

Determined to unravel everything.