Linear View

They hold their trapped time in their hands, between their fingers as if it were a flat, linear thing without fraying edges. They believe that they've struck the right bargain, that they can put their time next to vases and china in cabinets or on mantels. They believe the absence of time means infinity and eternity.
It will be years before they realize their mistake.
Time is not a vacuum.
They touch their fingers to their faces, the corners of their eyes and mouths, as if they can feel the wrinkles there, frozen in their emergence.
There is no aging gracefully without age.
Rainy springs blur in other rainy springs. Sunsets and sunrises turn grey, never counting down to the last sunset or sunrise; each day's beauty has the potential to be outdone. There is no urgency. No impulse.
When they realize, they try to pry open the box, dig fingers into locks, slide nails between lids. Time, cubic, slithering, reusable, cyclical time, evades them. Time had no regard for their forward/backward view.
They pry much longer than they should be able, past the years they have trapped in their boxes.
While time skips and spins, always borrowed and reused, never truly halted.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay