I Don’t Have Time To Let You Waste Mine
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
I don’t have time
to waste mine—
not in the polite increments
once mistaken for conversation,
not in protracted negotiations
with indecision,
not in the quiet erosion
that sometimes passes for intimacy.
Time is not neutral.
It accumulates consequence.
It is muscle and marrow
and the slow arithmetic
of becoming.
I have already spent years
confusing endurance for virtue,
mistaking my capacity to remain
for proof that I should.
I lingered inside untenable rooms,
calling it patience,
until the walls learned my silhouette
well enough to keep it
after I left.
Grace was given.
Seasons passed.
Context was offered.
Understanding extended
until generosity learned how to dull itself.
But time—
time does not replenish itself
out of courtesy.
It does not return
because harm was unintentional
or beautifully explained.
My life is not a rehearsal
for someone else’s readiness.
What I am building now
requires clarity.
Exits that stay exits.
Boundaries with load-bearing strength,
not the decorative kind
that collapse under pressure
and call it compassion.
This is not cruelty.
It is calibration.
I am reclaiming the hours
once siphoned off
in the name of harmony.
The mornings that began already negotiating.
The nights spent translating myself
into something more palatable
to comfort.
I will not keep bleeding time
into arrangements that rely
on my availability
as their primary resource.
Distance, sometimes,
is the only way
to stop being consumed
by proximity.
I don’t have time
to waste mine—
and finally,
I understand that time
was never asking permission
to leave.
Neither am I.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
