For Time

I feel age in my knees.
Each unfamiliar crack,
each resistance of bone
against eroding bone,
is measured in years.

Was it yesterday
that I sat in the sun
with Mother
and ate tangerines,
each cold, juicy sliver
flowing down my throat
like liquid velvet?

Was it yesterday?
Was it another century?
A different era?
A dream even -
yet another trick time
plays on me these days,
the trickster that it is.

When was it that
I realized my father was
human after all,
not the god that I had worshipped
him to be. Human, flawed,
and perhaps in my rage,
even dispensable.

How is it that time
has nullified the cold shock,
the hot fury of departed moments?

(Can time travel with my words?
Can it say
that sometimes love is consumed,
supple that it is,
by the acid toxicity of lies.)

Last night
(when I first felt age in my knees),
I sat near open windows
and smelled rich aromas
of curry and coriander
emanating from every kitchen
in the building.
The smell was foreign to me,
too strong,
uninvited.

Was it only six years ago
that I embraced my mother
and smelled these spices
in her clothes,
in her hair,
and felt as though I was home?

Six years. A lifetime. An irreversible
change
of preferences.
Time has taken hold of me
and flown,
and I have lost my bearings.
Time has stabbed my flesh
and slid the knife inside to its hilt.
If it weren’t for the scar tissue,
I would not remember that this
tricksy beast injured me -
and to this, Time quietly
responds -
And I saved you, too.

It gives me no answers,
Just ever more rhetorical questions -
was it years ago…
was it yesterday…
Time, Time, Time,

you cruel bastard,
you patient friend,

you have made me a stranger.