The Hollowness of Time

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Time stole in

lighthanded as a pickpocket

Took her youth

quick as a gasp

Passing by the glass, she glimpsed 

fissures at the fault lines of her surface

saw her structure sinking

She hadn’t noticed

this slow decay of her self

until the instant it caught her 
off guard

She wondered

whether Venetians perceived their city sinking

little by little or

Would they find themselves one day

knee deep in water and ask

“When did this happen?”

She once had been called a rock

Sturdy, stable, strong

and grew to embrace this image

But even rocks erode over time

crumbling to gravel

then dust

What would she be

if she fractured?

She imagined herself a geode

delicate, crystalline beauty at her core

But she suspected
that under the exterior

She was only hollow.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Free Verse, My Love In Her Wild Magnificence