Time Getaways

“How can it be lunchtime already?” Susan exclaimed in shock.
“I just began the Simms report, and it was nine o’clock.”
“I know because I checked the time on my clock radio;
  that could not have been much more than fifteen minutes ago!”

High up on the twenty-third floor of Corporate Acme,
shafts of sunlight pierced the skylights for everyone to see.
So Susan’s incredulity took Betty by surprise;
she thinned her lips and cocked her head, puzzlement in her eyes.

“It really is twelve o’clock,” Betty said, with a hint of bite;
she even checked her wristwatch to make sure that she was right.
She formed a toothless smile but it wasn’t quite a smirk,
and urged, “C’mon, old girl, it’s time to take a break from work.”

Susan got up but she retained a stiffness in her pose;
she eyed the papers on her desk and grabbed a vase-held rose.
She stared intently at the rose like she was hypnotized,
then Betty’s blatant flippancy was suddenly downsized .

“What is it Susan?” Betty asked, her hand upon her arm;
the look upon her face was such to trigger some alarm.
“Something occurred, this is not right,” her voice was very low;
“I have no sense of nine to noon--where did those hours go?”

When Betty looked at Susan’s face she saw that it was pale;
she wondered if there was a chance delusion would prevail.
But holding to compassion’s rein, she lent Susan an ear;
and all through lunch, at Our Place, she took the time to hear.

It was compelling, to a point, the time that Susan lost;
yet Betty thought, “Although I’m nice, sometimes there is a cost.”
The look that Betty saw in Susan‘s eyes was most sincere,
so Betty did her best to placate Susan‘s growing fear.

They finished their shrimp cocktail and they drank a glass of wine,
and Betty was convinced she had assured her things were fine.
They even joked of UFO’s that slip the crack of sky;
then as they both returned to work, the pace of life went by.

The incidence of sunlight beams was now much more extreme;
Betty pondered perhaps Susan had some sort of dream.
But then she thought, at quitting time, with much amazement spent,
“It‘s five o‘clock and I don‘t know where those four hours went!”

36 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
3-6-13