Ten Seconds of Eternity

It's narcissistic,
an artistic masturbatory practice,
hanging the faded memories,
memorialized in splattered ink
and smeared graphite,
upon the walls of my room.

Stories of childhood and death
and innocence lost
like it was written in a notebook,
only to be misplaced in an attic, or basement,
under a box of fading baseball cards.

It's narcissistic,
an artistic masturbatory practice,
immortalizing the mortality
of my life
in these stories of my memories.

But even ten seconds,
just ten seconds,
could be an eternity in memory,
if only you could recollect it all—
to describe in enough detail
the smell of jasmine,
the fields of oaken brown
lapping across black lace,
the taste of raspberry on her tongue,
and the beating, pounding, drumming, sloshing
your blood made in your head and chest
as your legs wavered with the fluidity of water
at the end...
If you could describe
in such perfect, minute and encompassing detail
such an ineffable moment
to evoke the same feelings,
the same throbbing, enticingly despairing emotion
in another,
then you would know eternity.

But to know it as only ten seconds
is to know the deepest,
most substantially wrenching regret.

And so, while
it's narcissistic,
an artistic masturbatory practice,
I hang my faded memories,
memorialized in splattered ink
and smeared graphite,
upon the walls of my room
in an attempt to hold onto
some piece of their eternity.