I am a time traveler.

I awake and my hands have become the arthritic clawed appendages of an ancient crone. They curl and ache with the stabs and throbs of a million years of living. I have left my youthful body in the past and become the liver spotted grandmother I someday hope to be.

I am a time traveler.

As my mornings turn to evenings and my evenings become night my steps shift from an easy and purposeful stride into the slow and painful shuffling of legs whose feet have left too many footprints on this earth.

I am a time traveler.

Each day I age one hundred years in twelve short hours. I awake entombed in the decrepit body of the night before. I rise to shed the wrinkled skin of my aged self like so much crinkled crepe only to feel it fall back across my body as the sun traverses the sky.

I am a time traveler.

My time machine was born within me, a broken set of instructions written into my genetic code. Like Prometheus I am bound to spend my days in increasing agony only to be healed by the velvet darkness of the night.

I am a time traveler.

By Misty Morehead 8/1/16