We all want to pluck a chunk of time,
usually the good bits, and store them
someplace safe—

a chronological savings account,
perhaps, or we chop time into
small sections and stuff it

into mason jars, tucking those
precious containers into our souls’
basements so that we might

periodically descend into the dark
and retrieve one when we crave
a taste of the sweet preserves.

We can try to freeze time, but
honestly, there isn’t a walk-in freezer
big enough to safeguard a lifetime.

We are left, then, with the fragile
storage of the heart, the even more
fleeting repository of memory,

kairos, deep time, which wobbles,
seems to stop as we step outside
and bask in the light of a waxing

moon and winking starlight, or
when we laugh with a beloved, losing
track of that measured by clocks,

but leaving us—if we are lucky,
even as these mortal bodies fade—
with only the most tender snapshots

of a smaller, more beautiful world,
one in which we are not alone,
to carry with us for as long

as we are us.