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Time

Eve Robson-Rooney describes the experience of feeling unable to change in this evocative poem.

Folded in on herself,

Hot thighs pressed against hot chest,

Hot knees up to hot forehead,

On which there is seaweed hair – 

Time curls up and sweats.

Flesh sticks to

Cold white tiles beneath her buttocks.

The clocks cry her name from

Outside the door;

Their hands are stiff and still.

She thinks she is crying,

Half asleep, half awake.

Anaesthetised by pain,

Her damp hot skin does not move from

The cold white tiles.

The words she cannot say

Buzz in her ears,

Sitting fatly on her heart – 

Enough to make

Her own breath suffocate.

I am strong. I must move.

She hears the words she cannot say.

But the hot flesh that is stuck on

The cold white tiles

Does not move.

Someone must help me.

She thinks but cannot say.

Someone must move me 

Before it is too late,

Because I am unable 

To move myself.

No-one can tell her 

That the only person that can help Time

Is Time herself.

Artwork by Rachel Jung.

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