(no subject)

The Appetite of Time

It's nothing you'd notice at first,
a peckish nibble here or there.
Sometimes, if you weren't careful,
a larger bite when you've had an accident --
falling down stairs or off the bed.
Even then, you always healed fast and well;
these things happen and the scars
of invisible teeth became war wounds
used to amaze your friends.
Under the sucking of teeth and impressed grunting,
a nervous, timid nip...

The first holes are easy to ignore,
a thunderbolt of pain in a clear blue elbow
or an alarming cache of misplaced items growing
in the last place you'd think to look.
The scars you've birthed became more reluctant to leave,
but your friends aren't so impressed any more --
they've got their own mouths to feed.
The pocks develop and converge
towards a pattern too deliberate to be benign.
Under the gasps of surprise, the glare of dismay,
a tireless, busy gnawing...

After a lifetime, teeth become cruel.
Quietly devouring, piece by piece:
another region forced to abandonment
and a slow descent of unremarkable disrepair.
Satisfied with its handiwork, it moves on.
One by one, friends were cut down
and you realized, of course too late,
that it won't stop until there's nothing left.
Slowly, surely, flashes of pain die to numbness.
In the silence of finality,
the satisfied bruxing of completion.

-DAC, 1/26/06