Don't Stay

about being frozen in a moment, transfixed in a period of transition

I began my adult life alone today,
Sitting solitary at a cafe table,
My music spinning thoughts
In a time without temperature
Or life to lend it meaning.

I pace in an adult's outfit
On break from my adult's job
I am an insect in a shell.

I consider the shampooed, conditioned, blowdried strands
That blow across the blankness of my face:
They are mine and not mine
The dead residue of who I have been
Eight months past.

I am not yesterday.
I am not tomorrow.
Not a specter of a memory,
But the ghost of a moment.
I never learned to give out time;
I swing my net through empty air
And come up with nothing.