I’ve only got five
Five minutes
Five minutes to write this poem
Class is starting soon
I will go, I will sit
I will listen, but I will not say anything.
Four minutes.
My lungs ache for that next cigarette, but I know
I can’t smoke one before class
Not enough time
Time, what a cruel mistress
Heals all wounds, takes everything we love away from us
Three minutes to go.
The Earl Grey tea sits like a cinderblock in my gut.
I’m getting an encore performance
I wish the curtains would draw shut.
Two minutes.
Less than one hundred and twenty seconds.
It can be forever
And it can be gone in an instant
Funny thing, time
It’s never a constant
It all
Depends upon
Our perception.
One minute to go. Time to wrap this up.
This line took exactly eighteen seconds to type.