Trapped In a Web of Time

Moving, it seemed, inching bit by bit toward the glorious moon. Steadily, the moon lured the star, enchanting and intoxicating its mind and ensnaring the soul, it beckoned the star steadily. Poised lasciviously, and glorious aroma emanating poignantly, its petals of silver gleamed and danced in the breeze. 

The arms of time girdle and swivel slowly and attentively, spinning as a spider fabricating its web; delicately, precisely, as your eyes are numbed, and the light bent; watching and swaying in the rhythmic tic-tac of moments. 

One second and then another... Each as close to the former instant as it is to the next. In the middle, they are poised, neither here nor there; wedged and caught in between. Like a star: amid the world and the heavens. But the star is moving, you think, it’s moving towards the crescent, like a moth to light: unsure, bewitched, and gullible. So clueless, you think, of the future, so stupid.
	
But you know how it feels like, to be caught up in the middle, fixed to one spot, and to stick there, unmoving. In the middle. You know how it is to be simply a spot, a period at the end of a sentence, clinging to that phrase, that circle, in the midst of the continuity, again and again and –

And you can’t stop. You are caught up, in the middle; winnowed in the vicious loop, tossed around the air, floating, like a gray speck of dust. Unmoving; you know how it feels like to be there, just there, and no where else. Tossed in the air, flying, but still, gliding but stiff; you feel like you’re keeping up, like you’re changing, too; the wind blowing you around like a forlorn but free dandelion feather, spinning and twisting like a spider’s web. Translucent and soft, you are free, naught but a whisper in the sky, and just a wisp of a cloud; you drift along. Or maybe you’re that star: moving closer and closer toward the moon.

Then, you blink. You are in the beginning again, back to the middle. Nothing has changed, you haven’t moved. It was only the circle, the vicious circle, you think, drifting you about. Where you had started is right where you end. The short but binding tuft of memory of the speeding rush of liberty is gone. Your eyes still blurred with the experience, you try to cling to the memory. Your hands open and close furiously, jaw working in harmony with the rich saliva filling your mouth, chewing and swallowing crisp but stale air, as you try to taste the memory and the freedom, slipping and sliding away like glass, or a single teardrop you writhe to catch and wipe. But you’re still here. Still on the spot you were standing minutes ago – or was it days, or maybe years... 

Caught up, you stare longingly at the moon. It is so beautiful, untried and pure; an enigma, it reeks of change, or glory you crave to have. You swim toward it bit-by-bit, closer every minute, every second, even. It grows more colossal, like that dream you forgot, and you swim. You swim toward it like you swam up the bodies of all those women; screaming in delight to prove, to show to everyone - just like some act. Just like the mask you hide behind; poker-faced and poised; you’re unmoving. Your face unchanging and blank: impassive and empty, like the dark pits and the unending tunnels of your eyes.

And you fall. You fall into that web you’ve spun yourself so dexterously and skillfully. Trapped. You’re stuck and unmoving; you are merely there and no where else. Thread over thread of silk wrapped around systematically, logically, cords surpassing slender but sturdy filaments, strapping your arms and legs and eyes... Time escapes inconspicuously between your fingers like untamed water, breaking into deltas of years and decades. Children grow and trees rebirth, as you stay, still like the windless day, and like the forlorn star that dies, unnoticed with its light gone out and fire extinguished. Caught and trapped, your watchful eyes survey as the dawn paints itself in yellow streaks and then blaze suddenly, fading away into blinding white. 

Lost in the time-lapse, white, you think, like your star. The star that is crawling like an unctuous spider toward the moon’s arms, burdened with time, a red hourglass weighing it down on its abdomen. But the star takes another step, and untangles another mesh of pure silk: unfurling from its spinnerets with every grain of blood-colored sand that snail it’s way unhurriedly down the skeletal neck of the hourglass. Held back by its own web, the spider struggles in the wrath of time and unfolded conspiracy, and inside the subtle work of the trickster and the skillful weaver. The star is in the middle, right between the world and the moon, motionless and unmoving, inside its own web. But no, you think, the star is moving, every second now it’s edging closer and closer to its goal. Changing, you think, the star is continuing.       

Then you realize. Oh, you whisper, it’s not the star that’s moving; it was the clouds and the sky that were changing around it.