He tells me I am a leaf high on a tree. Inside I am intricate. Delicate. I tell him he is water running along the earth. Simple. Essential. He is life. I awake one day to find myself changed. I am parched, yellow, shrivelled. I crinkle when I move. He is water, unchanging. The ground has eroded, rerouting him away from me. I take a last look, as I fall, at the lush landscape he runs toward, the verdant garden sprawling forth. I am a leaf. Without water, I wither.
We sit in twin lawn chairs beneath the full moon. A star shoots by. I point and he misses it. The star giggles. The moon chuckles. I pull my chair closer. “I once tried to swallow a star,” he says, “but it got caught in my throat.” When I give the moon a sideways glance, it only winks. I lean closer to him. He swallows. The star bobs in his throat. “Right here,” he says, pointing. I don’t miss it.
There is a girl drenched in time. Where others press their lips to their watches to suck out spare seconds, she empies her pockets and hours spill onto the floor. Her watch ticks on her walk home, slow and steady, lending minutes where milliseconds should be.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick...
T...
Winter falls - a sudden, silent, stillness - and the girl drenched in time is frozen.