The Love I Hoped to Hold

by Josephine Jael Jimenez
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Time used to move slowly when I didn’t enjoy every minute.
It was agonizing to watch the clock as it ticked slower and slower,
making each day before my new life hurt with every little stop around.
But still, those years are gone and those days with them.
They no longer exist, only the memory of the pain remains.

But now time moves quickly and I’m having trouble keeping up.
It moves even quicker when I’m in the presence of my love.
What kind of mania is that,
to feel minutes as if they’re seconds and hours as if they’re minutes
in the presence of your heart in human form?
It’s a different kind of pain.
It’s sweet.

If we were to be apart, time would move slowly again.
The pain of my younger youth would return
as I stared at clock after clock until I could be together again with my heart.
My life would feel longer and maybe I would have more time to be great and good,
but length of life doesn’t feel as important as it used to.
All I want is to fill every second of everyday with bickering and love and silence
between me and my heart in human form.
Clocks can move at record speeds
and my life can feel short and full of nothing that can be called great,
but it would be sweet and full of minutes and seconds and hours
that were more beautiful than the painful moments that lasted forever when we were apart.

Never did I think I would crave a faster life, a quicker timeline.
Time was all I wanted,
death was the only thing I feared.
That all changed when love came to hold my hourglass and whatever angle it chose.
All that matters now is when I’ll get my next dose of love
and how long I get to be intoxicated with it before I have to go away,
even for a second, and hour or a minute.
Time used to be the love I hoped to hold with me when I died,
but now she means nothing to me.
She’s kind when you hold her close,
but she’s cruel when you forget to love her the most.