deux nuages

By Jose Oseguera

A moment:

There’s nothing more

Brief or revisited;

Enjoyable or painful;

Life-changing or damning.

Moments are the kindle

Of dreams and nightmares;

The indescribable you try to capture

With the netting of words.

As butterflies, they shift and change

At random with the forces surrounding them—

Too strong not to be swayed or consumed—

Yet, they’re free to do as they please.

These precious insects of eternity

Are whole ecosystems that you dissect,

Peeling back layer after layer

Of flesh, muscle, bone, and

Spirit until you locate their soul.

Moments are nothing

More than soul:

Ghost marrow stitched of loss.

You can’t feel the passage of time,

But you can feel moments, each one—

As hairs on your body—plucked out

From the root when you relive them,

Every time more detailed

Than when they were first lived.

Life is insignificant—

A ripple in a sea of galaxies—

But a moment:

A moment is everything;

It’s time itself encapsulated

In a droplet.

The Piltdown Review