As she looks up from across the room, there hangs a clock.
Against the monotone paint spread across the brick walls, the clock rests in a straight line sight from where she sat. Fixated on the rhythmic ticking of each hand, one after another, everything becomes a blur. The little, red hand jumps dash by dash of the frame around it, yet every jump feels forever ago; every moment she’s spent staring feels unlived, and suddenly, the seconds pass by like they were never occurring to begin with.
She’s never been good at races, but all of a sudden, she finds herself stuck in the race she least enjoys. A race where her mind is against itself. A race where all is lost and none is gained. Where there is no slowing down, only what feels like speeding up, she is stuck in a race where there is no winner.
She is stuck in a race against time.
As the hands of the clock continue to pass by, time slips away from her, and she knows there is no catching a grasp on it. She sits in awe as the moments of her life are pinned against the orderly numbers of the clock as they, one by one, pass by her.
Just for a moment, she wishes to stop time from passing her by as if the significance of it all means nothing, and her life is based on the precious timely ticking of the hands.
For her, time is her worst enemy. The indefinite continued process of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole has caused her to live in moments she fears she is not ready for while ripping away at the ones she most wishes to stay in forever. Every moment of her life has been lost amid time and cannot be retrieved as they have already been swept away; it is all now a memory and in the time she wastes longing for what is already gone, more passes by her. And more, and more, and more.
Time always wins.
The clock always ticks in its rhythmic pattern, passing her by as if it knows she will never beat it, taking with each second a part of her she will never get back. But, just for a moment, she wishes to freeze it. She wishes to freeze time.
Just for a moment, she wishes to stop time from passing her by as if the significance of it all means nothing, and her life is based on the precious timely ticking of the hands.
Just for a moment, she wishes to have a second to truly live in the moments that are passing her by. Because just a day ago, she was crawling along the shoreline with the sand beneath her feet, followed by those above her, and now, she sits in front of a brightened screen collecting every shooting star, dandelion petal, and birthday wish she can, all in the hope to—just for a moment—freeze the seconds that are ticking by.
But no matter how many wasteful wishes she makes, she is still stuck in an unwinnable race against the one thing that can never be frozen: time.
