Minutes to Midnight
A clock nailed to the wall like a threat, face cracked,
hands inching with intent.
The house is a wound, shadows pooling at the baseboards,
every room swollen with the aftermath of laughter.
Time seeps through fissures—not mercy, but exposure:
youth circling back,
voices thin as old film, brittle in the dark,
every promise echoing, every betrayal sharper than glass.
Shades stalk the corridors, slip beneath the doors,
their touch cold, reminding what’s been lost—
nights when nothing could wound us,
mornings when nothing was wrong,
now just a haunted retelling, the story running backward
while the hands crawl forward, ticking spite into our bones.
Eyes flick to the clock—numbers bleeding toward nothing,
every minute sliced by a blade that can’t be stopped,
no justice, no cure, just the dim aftertaste of regret.
Lost nights: headlights cutting through fog,
broken curfews, cigarette halos,
plans dissolving by sunrise.
Fragments cling: a laugh in an alley, a first touch,
a scream gulped by the city,
the cut of a secret kept too long.
Every memory a splinter, each hope a crack in the rearview.
No solace in old photographs—smiles brittle now, frozen,
torn edges, faces half-remembered,
eyes that dare the night to end.
The silence contracts.
Each tick, a wound; each tock, a dare.
Do we seize what’s left or let it slip through our hands,
one last attempt to wring meaning from worn skin?
The chill creeps in where youth once burned,
lost years slithering down the spine,
old songs fading, old dreams turned warning,
the ache of what’s vanished settling deep,
haunted echoes pooling in twilight,
shade blanketing everything unsaid.
Every footstep in the dark leaves another question,
every second shaves the future into less,
no restart, no forgiveness,
just the relentless grind and the breath held too long.
Heart’s lament, an unfinished note dissolving,
the countdown not to some grand explosion—just a closing in,
past shades steering by dead reckoning,
nothing ahead but the final clarity of endings.
The truth hangs unspoken.
Will we make this count, or let it slip away instead?
The clock grinds on—thirteen minutes, then none,
and the echo remains, in the hush, in the gone.