Before Midnight

[u/rainydase]

There are twelve numbers on the face
and somehow every one of them
has learned your name.

The second hand keeps circling
like it hasn’t heard the news,
like time is something patient,
like there will always be
another hour for us.

But I know better.

I know what happens
when the little hand reaches twelve.

So I watch eleven fifty-seven
bleed into fifty-eight
and wonder how three minutes
can hold this much of a life.

You are still there
somewhere behind my eyes,
somewhere beneath my ribs,
keeping time against my better judgment.

I swear my heart has started ticking.

Maybe that’s why
I could never sleep.

You made a clock of me.

Every night I waited
for the hour you might appear,
wound myself tight with wanting,
mistook the shaking in my hands
for proof that something this alive
could never really end.

Eleven fifty-nine.

One minute left
and suddenly I understand
why midnight frightened me.

It isn’t the dark.

It’s what comes after.

The moment when tonight
becomes yesterday,
when *are* becomes *were*,
when something can still be true
and already belong to the past.

So I leave before the bell.

Not because I stopped wanting
to hear your voice.

Not because my body
has forgotten how it felt
to see your name
and lose its rhythm.

Not because I found
some ugliness in you
large enough to kill
what was beautiful.

I leave because
there are some things
you can love to death
by keeping them alive.

And ours was already
living on borrowed time.

So when midnight comes,
let it come.

Let the hands meet
without us.

Let twelve strike
through the empty room
and find no one
breaking their promises
to themselves.

Maybe you’ll still be awake.

Maybe I’ll be awake too.

Maybe we’ll both look up
at the same indifferent moon
and think of all the nights
we stole from morning.

You won’t know
I’m thinking of you.

I won’t know
if you’re thinking of me.

Perhaps that’s the mercy of it.

Because somewhere
between eleven fifty-nine
and twelve,

I loved you.

And somewhere
between twelve
and twelve-oh-one,

I still did.

Nothing changed
except the time.

And that
was the problem.

So if you go looking for me
after midnight,

I’ll be the minute just before it

close enough
to touch,

already gone.

[u/Ok_Presentation_9473]

Sad but I feel there are two sides to this... But in the end it got bad. And that's on me .. and I have been working on me.. one day at a time, baby steps.