4:17

The cracked face watches time freeze,

glass spiderwebbed in a crooked smile.

Hands stuck stiff at 4:17—

not the right time, just the only time.

A breath held and abandoned,

a pause heavy as dust in a silent room.

Ticking stopped, heart still,

trapped in this wrong moment,

a fragment caught under peeling wallpaper.

The café hums without it,

a relic that refuses to move,

frozen like the breath I hold

when memory cracks and falters,

a clock that chooses to forget.

Time’s cruel joke lies cold and dead,

exactly wrong,

but somehow still right

for two small chances a day.