Where the Hours Halt and Spread

Even if the world moves we remain at this still centre where the hours halt and spread out across these crumpled sheets of yet another hasty coming together taken in the middle of lives that only meet for these snatched times. Here our two worlds meet and our two separate times fuse together as we cling to each other, both wishing that time would stay behind at the door and leave us here alone inside some separate universe where hours, if not days, pass in less than an eye blink back in our own lives.

We step outside those lives to come here, to meet here, whenever our two separate worlds can intersect, whenever we can calculate that their two orbits will be near enough to each other for us to feel the pull of each other’s gravity drawing us back to this room.

The curtain at the open window billows in the breezes that sneak in from our outside worlds, carrying the distant sounds that remind us that soon our time here will be over and we will have to go back to those separate worlds that wait beyond the door.

Already we are moving apart as we lie on this crumpled bed, as though our gravitational attraction is fading as our separate worlds begin to pull us apart again. I can feel you withdrawing back into your life as I stumble away to dress myself in my usual life, ready to walk reluctantly back into my world.