to make time machines appear

but, I can’t control it.

 

They disguise themselves in many

shapes and sizes, sounds and smells

 

luckily, no one else can use them

because I’ve misplaced a few.

 

They bring me to the past

without warning or notice

 

and since time is ever-moving

I come back to the present

 

further in the future

than when I left.

 

One such machine got intertwined in

“say something i’m giving up on you”

 

me running through school doors after dismissal

the counselor awaiting 

 

an explanation for my panic

“He Might Do It Again, Call His Parents!!!

 

I don’t want him to die.”

 

One lays on my shelf

a signed yearbook

 

high school graduation

my last words before she moves

 

but I don’t know it yet

“What if I never see you again?”

 

One I found last night  

Where the sidewalk ends

 

8th grade music class

me embarrassed yet proud

 

“you’re the first i’ve

had to take away a book from,

 

it’s usually a phone”

the teacher laughed.

 

I try to surround myself with ones

that feel like a warm embrace

 

that smell like Sedona sunsets

or sound like Costa Rican hot springs

 

but even they can make me gloomy

when the past seems brighter

 

than the future.

 

 

This poem was inspired by Brenda Shaughnessy’s I have a Time Machine:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91496/i-have-a-time-machine