Mortal Coil

Time layered all around me
each moment laid on top of the next
as see-through as glass

Here you are coming out of a shop
here you are asleep in our bed
and me waking, delighted to find you there
here you are cycling ahead of me
here you are entering the room bringing me breakfast -
your slender wrists exposed beyond the dressing gown
one thumb posed on top of the mug handle
here you are tucking the shoulders of my top in
here you are pen in hand
filling our calendar with wonderful and mundane things

And I feel that time is not linear
but coiled around itself
coiled around me
like a blanket
like a snake
like a labyrinth
and so you are here and here and here

How soothing this is
how much this allows me to believe you really were here
you really lived and I have not made you up
and how painful this is
for seeing through these layers is to bring you
within a hairs breadth of existence
and yet you do not exist here with me
things play out in those strands of time as they did
again and again and again and again
I cannot step in
I cannot cycle harder and catch you up

And I think of that poem about weaning my eyes from the gap in the air
and how I do not want that to happen
and how I yearn for that to happen