She was an hourglass—not the kind of hourglass that gleamed of polished glass or had curves that fit in the palm of my hand
but the kind that filled up the room with a figure that enveloped morality and swallowed death whole.
the kind that reflected me and my whole being, which comforted me because I always knew I could find and see myself within her.
Every day, without fail, She counted her grains of time that
dropped
one
by
one
in sync with the drum of her beating heart.
I thought She was beautiful when
She opened her mouth to taste the sugar that rained over her supple cheeks and shoulders.
I thought She was beautiful when
She adamantly refused to hold His hand, to be only His, to listen only to Him.
I thought She was beautiful when
She let me sleep in her soft folds and creases.

so full of life. so far from death. so many grains of time left.
or so I thought.
I thought. They didn’t.

Others wanted to count those grains of time for her—stealing what was rightfully her own
they told her what to do, how to count, how to look, and how to taste.
Glass shattered when she tried straightening out the folds. The shards lodged themselves within the eyes that once shone bright and gleamed at the constant, perpetual fall of time.
She tried to insert suns and moons into her already full body. Her body fried and turned a charred shade of black, no longer the mirror it once was. the moons weighed down her back—pulling and pushing the tides of her rippling backside to the ground.

They stole each grain with each jarring shout.
“ugly”
“independent”
“fat”
leaving a trail of scattered, loose time on the floor
The hourglass was gone—She was gone.
Wait, no. It was I who disappeared… into the pile of lifeless sand at the end of the trail.