Your neighbours set their clocks
by your daily walks.
Was your whole life
woven so tightly
or were they your one ritual
in an otherwise
unhinged life?
I studied you
in university
and for years afterward
you hung on
talons in the flesh
of my mind
imposing your unsettling
infatuation with time
insisting it did not exist.
In an odd way
you made me a writer
irritated me
into scratching
some permanence
some legacy
just in case you were right
and time is an invention
I wanted vengeance
on a simultaneous world
indisputable proof
that I was here.