SO IS TIME: AN ELEGY by CLS Sandoval

So is Time: An Elegy

by CLS Sandoval

Curiosity stopped only by a burn or a cut

Questions unending for no reason other than to know

Playing touch and tackle football in ruffles and bows on the church front lawn

Riding the waves in the Pacific until lips were blue and toes were numb

We threw around the sands on the shore

You escaped through our fingers and toes

Lapping of wildflowers and honeysuckle in nostrils

Warmth of sun shining in hair

Dance of breeze encouraging lovers closer

Path only well enough marked for those who had ventured it before

Romance of youth and nostalgia

Droplets of you moistened our lips for first kisses

New York Minutes filled the calendar

Nominations and awards acceptances called

The dog guarded the window by herself more frequently

Movement transformed from fun to exercise

Food transformed from friend to foe

We used you as a pad between alarm and snooze

The stars are clearer some nights than others

The clearer, the more we rest in the past

The hazy nights keep us in the present

But the ethereal presses us to dream of what might happen tomorrow

As we simultaneously mourn the loss of yesterday

So is time

(Thank you to Stephanie Barbe Hammer for her feedback on this piece)

CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She has presented over 50 times at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections: God Bless Paul, Soup Stories: A Reconstructed Memoir, and Writing Our Love Story, and three chapbooks: The Way We Were, Tumbleweed: Against All Odds, and The Villain Wore a Hero’s Face. She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.

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