stereotypically, time really does slip by like miniscule granules of sand through my fingers; regardless of how vigorously I clutch my hand into a fist or how firmly I press my knuckles together, the gaps that riddle my flesh sustain ephemeral streams of beige like an hourglass signaling limitation, ridiculing human mortality. and i can feel the lines around my parents’ smiles deepen and the creases of their eyes stretch and i can feel my sisters shoot up like sprightly bamboo stalks and start to know more than i can teach them and i can feel my friends drifting until all i cling onto are the traces of their touches around my torso, the vestiges of vague visions that i can only recall fondly. and it’s solely the empty whispers and a simulacrum of contentedness i maintain with a fixed smile that sustain my wishes to return to the past, to the golden sensations of quiet, unknowing bliss, the perfect delusion of being unaverage, my grandmother’s warm, enveloping embrace.
