No time lost?

I bend over to blow out the candles.

The horizon once appeared so hazy as to seem irrelevant. 

A whole dream life beckoned...

Not a moment to spare.  

No time to lose...

Rip open the present.

I breathe life into inanimate toys.

No time lost.

I studied my image in the mirror.  

I detected a glint of youth unchanged.

They were my father's eyes pearing out from mine,

A subtle surprise to be thus metamorphosed.

There I had been.

There he appeared.

No time lost.

I spoke with my sister upon my birthday.

They had erased the theatre set of our childhood.

It was nowhere to be seen.

She was sad.

I laughed as provocation to the paultry property developers.

Fuck them all!

"The bastards can do nothing to destroy our play." 

"It was never concrete."

I thought.

No doubt they saw potential for a quick return.

There was no time to lose...

Let them accumulate.

Time is ticking.

No time lost.

Their reality counted for naught.

Our reality lives on despite our loss.  

This dreamt reality is ever present.

While we breathe...

No time lost.

I know I should be doing something "productive".

I was never so disciplined as to give up to should.

Should is no escape.

No time lost.

I breathe in the time's passing.

I feel the tiredness.

I feel the blood throbbing instants in my fingers...rested on the keys.

I hear the clac, clac, and the dog that sighs.

No time lost.

I fell upon an interview posted by Torn Halves.

It featured an author, Darian Leader, of a book entitled: "What is madness?"

Indeed, what is madness?

I should be "productive".

I know that.

It's engraved in my body, this, their madness.

We shall be productive.

We shall tally our time on that blasted spreadsheet...

Were this a blasted heath?

Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds...tick, tick, tick, tick, tally.

I count up the candles.

No time lost.

I take a long intake of breath, I blow them out.

There it is I am accumulating.

We live to accumulate.

These will be our monuments.

We build for loss.

Were this cumulus?

No time lost.

One last breath, our ashes to the wind.

No time lost.

What I write reeks of cinders.

This is mourning meaning.

There is a joy in abandon yet...

No time lost.

I write, I pause...

I am gone.

This is loss.

There is a clock ticking.

The chest lifts folds in my sweater no more.

The dog is hidden under the sofa.

The cat is wrapped in on itself.

It sleeps.

A clock ticks.

My daughter arrives, her cheek frozen against mine in embrace.

No time lost.

No time lost.

No time lost.