You tend to wrap sun rays around your throat,
death by strangulation of morning promises.
You tend to fill your cup with clouds,
or sugar your coffee with drops of rain,
you are always consuming, devouring
the dust you collect in the air every afternoon,
hoping the earth’s excrements are like batteries
for your body. Doesn’t the sun provide vitamin D?
Doesn’t rain cleanse, so they say? Isn’t O2
the harbinger of life, or something of the sort?
Why must each breath pass in and out the body?
Like the tick-tock of a clock, you are bound to the rhythm.
Here you are, ingesting the flood, waiting
to be at one with the universe.
It’s the only thing that will outlive you.
It’s the only thing that will outlive the end of time.
And you? Time is an accessory you wear on your skin
if you live long enough,
and the only proof of its existence
is death.
For Sloan Porter, the art of poetry has been an all-consuming journey since a young age. As a writer and interdisciplinary artist, she’s most interested in exploring a darker side, the questions that linger at night, and the passions that drive us. Her work first appeared in The Sirens Call, The Writing Disorder, and others. Find her on Instagram @sloan.porter.poetry