The Gift

Destroyed by a one second

temporal lag behind the universe—

echos of voices just ahead in time, untouchable and invisible to the eye

Radiant life lost in waves dissolving

into the cold embrace of entropy Imagine standing inside an empty building,

one second behind the rest of the world.

Everyone already gone, every life on earth

disappearing just ahead of you in time,

leaving you to walk through

what remains.

That is what loneliness feels like,

photons traveling forever just behind

the chattering sound of humanity,

too late to the energy that lifts them up.

Living in a silence stretched across everything,

a kind of despair where even memories

stop remembering the warmth of people.

A world still warm from their presence,

but emptied before I smiling arrive.

Incongruent events making dramatic delights You, Hyojin, stepped into my line of time—

a drift destroyed by a one second. The rift that erased the temporal delta,

that filled the void of emptiness,

with your royalty, your loyalty, your love.