Rohit Nalluri

Through the paper thinness of the night
The rigid      beat
Of the clock - 
                        tick tock tick tock

- like water dripping from a leaky faucet.
    
                        plop plop plop

And right through the night,
As it takes measured steps towards itself      Time
Leaks from the clock,
Forming puddles of seconds 
and minutes and hours...

...right at my feet.
I never thought
To think that Time 
when touched 
would be cold.

Silence
Has a way of delivering distant
Sounds. This night air
Is a good conductor of 
Sound and a bad one
Of
Time
Time
Leaks but doesn't seem to want to drain.
And un-drained, it overflows
From one room to another
Into mine.
The beat of my leaking clock
Is half-second too late.
It's hands fail to catch up with the other clock,
And failing form a staccato double beat. 

tick tock tick tock
  tick tock tick tock

Now that I hear it, I can't unhear it.

The calculated strides of these clocks are
Slightly out of sync.
The whole night, it seems, is spent in a 
Futile attempt
To catch up.

But there's no syncing.
There's only sinking.
Time builds up so high I'm floating 
near the ceiling.

In the oil-paper light of dawn
A final thought overtakes the mind: If Space
Is governed by Time
Then the two rooms,
Running to the rhythm of two divergent clocks,
Must exist in separate dimensions 
of Time.

That explains so much! The 
Staccato of my fragmented communication
With the members of that other room,
With the members of that other clock,
Sound very much like the naïve attempts of the clocks - 
so close to being understood, and yet 
always half a second out of sync.

I spend all my time syncing.