Time travel

My parents are from a planet so far away

that it’s almost impossible

to understand the distance.

There are so many zeroes in the number of light years

that the universe doesn’t seem 

big enough

for that amount of time to be crossed,

but, somehow,

my folks did it.

They didn’t last long when they got to Earth,

and their passing wasn’t because they couldn’t adapt

to the atmosphere or to the life and sustenance 

that grows here, but

rather

because they were so tired they couldn’t go on.

When they passed,

I mourned them

for days and

for weeks

and for months

and for years.

It was hard for me

to wrap my head around time and space

and to consider life as following the same path.

I couldn’t understand

how if they’d travelled for a thousand years,

how only a few handful of years on Earth

could be the ones that wore them out.

I remember when they were dying,

they told me,

Henry,

life comes at us fast and

what we think of as time isn’t

really time at all.

We see time as one thing happening after another,

like there is some kind of sequence to it all,

and while there is in some ways,

in other ways there isn’t.

Sometimes it is just happening all at once

and our minds sort it all into a film reel

so we can understand what is happening.

They told me they travelled thousands of years

by reordering the snapshots of their lives and

now it was time to pay the price.

They told me 

anyone

can travel time,

but we are not built to withstand the temporal shock.

Our bodies break down 

and our minds get caught up in the nets of time

and we can drown in the past or the future

while our bodies die in the present.

They told me not to worry

about time

or time travel

and to just let it all happen.