We search for time

By Lizzy Ioannidou

We search for time in the dust that cradles our dishevelled homes
and in the deepest of breaths we take
to see if our lungs can still hold the air
We search for time in echoes of archived voices
drifting in through window crevices
and in the vectors of our sanity as it waxes and wanes
We search for time in coded mementos
buried in the corporeal envelopes of others
and in the ripples of scarred bygones that linger in involuntary shivers
We search for time in the shocks that wake us
from the anaesthesia of automated order
and in the cycle of being that so abruptly breaks
to begin again
We search for time in the eyes of children without language
and in battle cries howling
death spells to the skies
We search for time in the feet that once metabolised space
and in the songs of flushed-out flesh
that burn through funeral streets that were never home
We search for time in the mess we make with our limbs
and in the kisses that ward away the struggle
to enter the world
We search for time in the unmourned words that line floors
and in the silences that mask clandestine springs
We search for time in the grass that cracks open concrete
and in the seeds that never found soil
but found sea