The Sand Trade

White sand is the rarest. That is possibly why we sell so little of it. So many people come to buy black sand, when their clocks have broken and they have nothing but their wristwatches to mark the ticking of seconds, the moments of their life passing and disappearing, as they wait anxiously in our dim shop for an hourglass of their own.

Father hardly lets anyone look at the white ones. He keeps them locked in a glass case and only brings them out every so often when the shop is closed, to clean them with soft feather dusters, placing them back in their cases with white gloved hands. "It is a precarious process," he used to say. And when age caused his hands to shake, I volunteered to do it myself. 

I recognize many colours now, when people come in to trade a blue and a green for a black, or a violet (which are also rare), for three or four blacks (depending on size). 

I have to resist the urge to tell them it is colour and not quantity that grants them more time.

Those who enter the shop frantically clutching their hourglasses, as though they were diamonds, who speak quickly, willing the transaction to occur as rapidly as possible, are willing to give anything for longevity. 

I once asked father if we, owning so many hourglasses, were to live long, but he shook his head. 

"We don't need to," was his only reply. "We have our supply and that is enough."

Our supply is not cerulean or pink (which they are calling now, in the more fashionable districts of the city, "azure" and "carnation"), just a handful of black and white ("onyx" and "ivory"). 

We split the hourglasses, and he ran out only months ago. I keep my hourglass on the shop counter, leaving half in fear it will run out too soon. Half hoping some frenzied buyer is desperate enough to grab it and leave with it themselves.

But my hourglass is still there, dusty and white and not even half empty.

Text by Lucie MacAulay