The clock chimed the hour.
How long had he been here,
inside the works of the great timepiece
marking imagined units that had meaning
only for him, for all, for no one?
He knew his time was limited, all
time would someday be depleted
and then what — that was the question
no one dared ask, everyone
answered. Time was a maze
there was no exit, a spiral
into a singularity he would never reach
naked, offering everything, seeing
only darkness and a billion stars
staring at him as the hands
eked their way around his face.
He could not remember how
it had begun, when it started
or how it would end, for it was
only the voyage that mattered
and the ticking of the clock,
or was it his heartbeat, that reverberated
into the heart of the cosmos?

First published in Beneath the Mask, Issue 2, 2023
https://1fae8784-bcf2-49f7-99b9-688f65018bf9.filesusr.com/ugd/8270b1_0525ac500d6b45af8c1b2e8ba1fc5a29.pdf