Seize the Seconds

Swatting away the pickpocket of your time in a poem I wrote in 2018

Hello, dear friends!

Somehow, this morning, I ended up in the well of an archive of writing I did back in 2018-2019, a project I called Daybreak Notes, in which I wrote, for a long spell, one little note every morning and sent it out via email. I did it for more than 100 days straight, and then some. I was a bit astonished, actually. I couldn’t even remember writing many of these!

So amazing to think what our past selves have done, that our current self has either forgotten or simply slid off the mental kitchen counter.

The very first Daybreak Notes was a poem, which I’ll include below.

And this little letter to you:

I'm trying hard to put down my phone, to listen more intently, to resist the urge to read something else while a 3D human is in front of me. Do you have this problem? Or maybe it's just me? It feels like a problem of this historic moment, and probably the 10,000 moments before and millions to come.

Like everything, the first thing that helps is always to realize. 

To a day of realizations, wherever you find them.

To our journeys,
Brianne
 

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Seize the seconds

These days feel stuffed, 
as wobby-jobby as
a used bookstore
teetering with titles,
cookbooks embossed 
with butter smears,
layered under manuals
and mysteries,
topped off with Dr. Seuss.

In the olden days, 
a book would tag along,
in my bag, to fill
the minutes that float up,
in waiting rooms,
on the train,
in the quiet spell
before a friend appears
in the cafe chair
across from mine.

That idea feels laughable now,
in this planet called
parenthood, where 4 minutes
is time right-sized to pee,
to cook two eggs just as 
the little boy likes them,
to dash upstairs, plug 
in the Internet router,
and blink my contacts
in or out.

Though, if I'm honest,
if I pause, if I think of where
my hands go first
when a minute burbles up —
it's straight to the phone,
this omnipresent, omniscent, 
evil-eyed companion
of unclaimed promises
and possibility —
pickpocketing my seconds.

Let today be the day
I start to reclaim them.

— Brianne Alcala