My Clock Won't Stop Ticking
Illustration by Maryam.
My clock won’t stop ticking.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s doing its job, and I’m quite grateful. I just no longer think it maintains the same integrity we once shared—sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour and so on. Its eerie silence in response to my pleas—or more seconds, more minutes, more hours, more time. I seldom ask for more unless I’m in need.
(And I mean really in need).
One night, I had stayed up particularly late watching time dissolve and managed to single out a shorter minute. Just over fifty seconds, but less than fifty-five. There was no word for it because no one was counting, so, universally, it was still a minute. On this side of the world, most people were sound asleep, on the other, dancing with the absurdities of life. The minutes continued to unfold. But I had noticed. Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three—a minute had passed, and seven seconds were lost. Seven seconds I needed to redeem. I could try to turn over the hourglass of existence to make up for my lost grains of dust or I could slip in between the apertures of time. It’s late, but something needed to be filled in the space in me that was left. I’m whole only in that I’ve built my own person from every time I asked for more, I was forced to make do with less. Almost as though less was a ruse to hope for more even when you know the rules. Things would’ve been a lot simpler if I accepted the duplicity of time. I knew—I think we both knew—even when you have more time, time is never enough. Maybe memory is forgiving the myth of return. There is no way back (I’m writing from there). But I still kept trying.
It made me think of you.
Anyway, my clock won’t stop ticking. ◆
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