The Killer Wind: A Powerful Poem on Time, Petrifying Grief, and Mortality

Tempus edax rerum.

Time, devourer of all things.

— Ovid, Metamorphoses 

The Killer Wind

I suddenly emerge
and taste the wind whizzing by.

The flavor is red, like blood.
It hurts my tongue,
which turns to stone.
The blood hardens,
like the wind.

It touches me gently.
I don’t want to touch it.

There’s no escape.
It’s gaining on me.

I’m stone-deaf.

The wind whistles, I know,
but I can’t hear it.

The wind is time, I know.
It’s stoning me to death.

It’s killing me,
whizzing by me like stone—

the petrifying wind—

the killer wind.

Note(Gemini):

By fusing Chronos and Medusa into a single atmospheric entity—the "killer wind"—the poem constructs an anti-myth. Rather than a hero journeying out to confront a monstrous titan or gorgon with mirrors and blades, the anti-novel's subject is immobilized in place, powerless before an invisible, ambient executioner that is both the weapon and the clock.