Time is all around, except inside

calendars on landfill desks piled

high with yesterday

and aspirations under white sheets, dead-

lines, red lines, and urgency.

But the floor sits

sticky with strawberry jam and

all the important jobs are still done

in summer's haze and

mirrors, cracked and glazed,

say, your eyes are the fireflies we

caught in July until you

peer deeper.

They're embers in the snowy dush,

face a constellation of confusion,

world tinged with

the gauzy focus of chlorine and

it's time to take that jump

from off the diving board

because time is

wearing thin.

Two feet standing on the precipice

before murky water lurking deep,

wondering, do I jump?

And you'll stand

until December's icy hand

shoves you into the freezing water

head first,

because you couldn't make that leap

and

I don't blame you anymore.