not enough time

There was just never the right amount of time, she decided. Time to say hello, time to hug, time to apologize, time to promise, time to say goodbye.  It was all whizzing by her like the colors on a groteque merry go round. Round and round and round.

Whenever she'd walk by old trees she would always wonder what the branches had been wittness to. And if the people underneath them had even noticed their existence. When she was under young trees she thought about returning in forty years to see them grown, to see how the time had passed in that unmoving life. To bear witness to the change in herself.

People kept leaving her. She felt as though her insides were a lake, a murky pool of water that sat in the middle of her stomach.  She would punch a hole through her skin with her fist, scoop out the water in shaking hands and watch the tiny droplets that splashed onto the ground below. She could feel their hearts beating as they fell.

All that was left in her was a desert. The dunes reflected the moonlight, the blazing gleam where no shadow was cast. It was silent except for the wind, whistling through the hollowed out space. She realized there was nothing that would grow there, nothing she could plant.

She had to leave too, if she wanted to get anywhere. She had to rise over the anti-flood and find the place where the olive branch would grow. She had to nest there, and leave the wasteland. Leave it before she ran out of time.