Time's edge stretches infinite and dark,

Like obsidian glass beneath starless skies.

We are all trespassers here, but time—

Time is the true prisoner, pacing its cage

Of seconds and centuries.

Each heartbeat marks its restless crawl:

A predator stalking tomorrow,

Devouring the moments we clutch

Like pearls in trembling hands.

Our fingers bleed from holding on too tight

To sand that slips away regardless.

In the distance, ghosts of morning coffee

And goodbye kisses line up like dominoes,

Ready to fall into the abyss of was.

The scent of their passing lingers—

Sweet as summer rain, bitter as regret.

Midnight approaches with velvet feet

And razor teeth. The air grows thick

With the perfume of dying hours.

They fall like autumn leaves,

Each one inscribed: “Yesterday,”

Each one a story cut mid-sentence.

The past spreads before us—

A necropolis of expired moments,

Where memory-moths flutter

Between tombstones of lost days.

Here lie the words we never said,

The chances we never took,

Dreams that died in their sleep.

Tomorrow stands sentinel at the gates,

Both executioner and midwife,

Promising everything, guaranteeing nothing

But the certainty of its own death.

It wears a mask of possibility

Over a face of finite hours.

The border draws closer now,

A silver wire tightening

Around the throat of now.

Time's garrote pulls taught

With the precision of physics,

The inevitability of entropy.

The bell tolls, deep and cold:

Twelve perfect drops of brass

Fall into the well of night.

Another day slides into history's grave,

Its death masked as rebirth,

While we pretend tomorrow

Will be different from today.

But the border knows better—

It has seen a million tomorrows

Born and die in its arms,

Each one unique as a snowflake,

Each one identical in its fate:

To melt into the endless stream

Of what can never be again.