Clouded Time

does it hurt to be so alive, rent open wide, so wide, the entire earth crashes inside, swallowed  in the hole of thee? your heart, its unbelievable size and pathetic gravity, remembers everything in dime-sized eternity.
Life seems to be a window, and I’m not sure how to work the latch. The weather outside oscillates between pleasant and frightful, and is often obscured by night. Am I glancing outside or back at my reflection? Figures pass by, quietly, and the wind rustles the screen. What can I offer the lifelike trees, wandering so close, so distantly?
Only a week until my little brother graduates high school, three weeks until the last of my greatest friends in this world are married (barring brothers), five weeks until I possibly own a house, eight weeks until I live only in that house. There is too much going on. I want to make slow, crazy decisions, like a predator, like a warrior, like a grandfather cat walking through the underbrush, like the tentative steps of the moon over the pool, as the clouds hanging overhead. I saw them each one, caught as daguerreotype frames on a vast, panoramic imax of life: the zeppelin emerging from flames; the mittened hand, reaching through snow; the shark with remora, gliding the ocean heavens; the dragon with arched spine and folded wings, all curves and sweeping motion as the ancient Chinese worm; the archipelago of turtles and ducks; cotton candy piled up and shredded by the coyote cloud.
This, too, is life, and every moment reminds me it’s time to crawl through the window and enter the sun, soak in the elephant sky, and run wherever the wind guides.