Unfathomable

Time hasn’t stopped.
It drags on and on,
elongating,
one moment stretching into the next,
indecipherable.

Our dreams hover,
day-old helium balloons,
stuck in that thick space between rationalization and
realization.

We laugh, but our smiles crack.
Tragedy attracts itself,
swarming,
buzzing and bumping up against our eardrums,
refusing to be silenced.

Reality is too real.
Nothing is as it once was.

What do we do when the future,
no longer a ladder toward our dreams,
flattens out into a perpetual,
unfathomable
present?