About This Poem

Time: A First Attempt at Naming the Fear

I wrote Time very early on, long before I had any confidence in writing. It came from a long term existential anxiety that had followed me for years — the constant question of whether I was living my life well, whether I was making the most of each day, whether I was already losing time without noticing. The poem poured out in one go, unedited and unpolished, and I have kept it that way because the rawness is the point. It was the first time I managed to put that fear on paper, and doing so helped more than I expected. It is one of the reasons I kept writing.

The poem moves through the ticking pendulum, the rolling earth, the lost years, the blurred childhood, the missed moments, the milestones that should feel triumphant but still carry doubt. It is a conversation with myself, trying to understand how time has passed, how memory has thinned, and how fear has shaped the way I look back. It is not a neat reflection. It is messy, questioning, restless — exactly how the anxiety felt.

The later stanzas shift toward hope, toward the desire to use time well, toward the possibility of writing another page tomorrow. Even the final verse, which imagines the end, carries a quiet wish that the time spent has been worthwhile. That wish is what kept me writing, and what keeps me writing now.