The Present Ledger

I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!

The only coin that holds real weight is now—

a flickering tender balanced on the palm,

precious for the very fact it burns.

What's spent is ash. No vault can hold it.

Yet see how freely we pour out this sum:

a pointless tribute to bridges the river claimed,

alimony paid to errors long buried,

compound interest on what we can't undo.

Regret, that patient taxman, never sleeps.

Anxiety sells insurance no one needs.

The grudge-keeper waits at every threshold.

And all the while, the ledger darkens:

Resentment's weight bends the spine like a bow.

Doubt fogs the glass we might have seen through.

Fear—that anchor—holds us off a shore

where nothing grows but paralysis and stone.

This does not cure into wisdom.

This only hardens what was whole.

Consider the cost of such accounting:

breath bartered for vapor,

the stride aborted mid-step,

words swallowed before they find the air,

laughter locked behind the sternum,

silence squatting where a song should live.

These are not prudent outlays.

They bear no fruit, earn no dividend.

They only thin the sky,

dull the undefended moment,

stiffen what once moved freely,

labor what once came easy.

In time, the collectors arrive:

Anger with its final notice,

Loneliness with its overdue statement,

Gossip and Judgment flourishing their liens.

The Reckoning

Until, suddenly, you realize the fraud.

A moment comes to scream the air out:

“I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!”

A final, empty lung-scour,

clearing the ghosts of what you were assigned.

Then, the huge, clean suction of a new breath—

the first sweet installment of the present hour.

There is one reckoning that makes sense:

Default on yesterday's phantom debts.

Refuse the promissory note of tomorrow's dread.

To be alive is to spend now—and mean it.

Exchange it for what resists all measure:

light finding its way through water,

one full breath taken like an inheritance earned,

the fathomless economy of eyes meeting.

Wealth isn't what you hoard.

It's knowing, with unburdened hands,

that only now can be spent well—

and that you spent it.