15,000 Days

This work started with a poem that I wrote in 2017 titled “15,000 Days”. My father’s life was fading before my eyes, and my instincts were telling me that he was not long for this world. I began reflecting upon this strange passage of time. We can perceive time as elastic, how slow our lives unfold, but a day can escape us. During that summer, I read countless news articles about the amount of time humanity had until climate change damage was deemed irrevocable. Some publications listed fifteen years, others as many as forty, of when this damage will be complete. 

I thought about this elastic time and how complacency develops when years are set into distant futures. I have always found it strange that we can almost manipulate time by describing it. Many days seem attainable; a set of years can feel like an eternity. After writing this poem, I thought about my father in his hospital bed, the last time I saw him alive. It felt like I could have all the time in the world with him, but I only had a series of days. Fifteen thousand days is a little over 40 years.