Time

“Existing without the choice of time will be difficult for you.”

“But it will be better.”

You didn’t know Louis back then, but you knew this was the right decision. Right as you stepped past the edge; right as you stepped past the graves - corpses at the rim of your world.

Broken pieces from those who made it to the end. Your world, where it’s full of destruction.

It could not be yours anymore.

Your mind broke with chimes and shattering glass…

#2

We dig until the grass screams. It is only here that there would be such life. We extract the colors and weave them into our silks. The tree bends, shaped like an L. Some upside-down. Some lonely, they stray far away from the grass.

Underneath the grass are the hands of clocks. Buried secrets exposed to the world if only they would not move the grass that screams. He was a little alive and staying dead; he hoped to remain dead under grass roofs weaved into an umbrella. Time did not affect the screams. They remain the same with age.

…Because we know this place to be anything but our own. We extract the grass to murder them. To cut short their time. Commit them to become clocks and arrows. Arrows that dart around the trees, pulling together the everstring of the forest and land. I long for their destruction. I long for them. I long for the screams of the grass above and the ticking of the soil below. I long. I live. I destroy. This place is mine. It is not for them.

--------------------------------------------------

Free them, and they will love you. Hate how the breeze seeps slowly across your ears. No screams nor silence; you are dying. The branches pull you in, strung up before you could even reach the clearing’s shifting grass. Hung from clotheslines that they would not save you from. Screams are not even your own.

Thoughts and screams endlessly pull at your escaping. Thoughts trying to encourage or deter you. They will not matter in the end; you will ensure it.

#3

Many years ago, this land was only a clock. Miles of dirt and cave pull together, piling across homes and mountains of time, soon carved away so the clock would still breathe. Rocks and dust meld across layers and layers of earth, magic, and time. The clock breathes underneath, making plant life obligated to shift and ever more alive. Strings crawl up from the clock’s edges, worming through what is not yet a forest, murdering, believing, and loving; the strings kill and keep safe. Soon complete by trees, seeds pouring and forming a square frame, becoming solid and dark and new homes for creatures crawling or still. They are flooding the world outside the meadow. The clock’s cries reach throughout the screeching, shifting grass. Everyone cares; no one loves it except to their own means. And…further in, nearer to the meadow and not trees, there is a boy of edges. And his tale is both near and far from the beginning of the wood.

Both near and far are similar when they live above the clock. The boy does not know who he is.

And did you?

#453

“What are you surrounded by?”

“Green and the meaning of tears.”

“Ah, so you’re alone then.”

“Is it so obvious?”

“Do you hear the ground?”

“Nothing. Only ticking. Only time fleeing.”

“Then…you know what is right?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“You know the history of it? The foxes? The feathers? The ferns?”

“I don’t know you.”

“I only know the edges.”

“Know the clearing instead. Know the saplings. Do not know time. Do not know edges. Do not notice me.”

“But you are the same as I, and so I wonder – “

“– You wonder?”

“Is it only loneliness that exists in this world?”

“Time is below us; how do you figure?”

“Implying time could be a friend?”

“’Tis the only way to make friends, through time – friends do not exist without it.”

“Ah, but it destroys that as well.”

“And what of your timeless existence? Where there is no change?”

“There is.”

“What?”

“There’s change.”

“How?”

“In the unchanging. It’s a different change every time. A different state of edges. You are not here all the time, after all.”

“I…I have not come to harvest the clearing’s screams.”

“Exactly. You are here for a different reason, and in that, there is change.”

“In that…is there also time? For how could there be change if there is no time?”

“Yes. I am on the rims of a clock. An outcast who does not function by its rules.”

“Why are you still alive?”

“I can’t leave.”

“I am falling apart. I can’t leave.”

“So then…what are you surrounded by?”

“Same as before. Green and the meaning of tears.”

“You’re sure of yourself and yet not the meaning.”

“I am sure.”

“Then I envy you.”

“You can’t escape time. You have to choose your moment.”

“And so, I choose none.”

#23

Amalie did not choose.

#205

From my perspective, this clearing was only about forgetting the past. Only the sad lived here; only the lonely visited. Pouring – no, extracting raw feeling from the ground and taking in someone else’s time so their own would be forgotten. In some ways, I understood it. I weave strings from my branch, pondering what could have been possible if only the clearing hadn’t been alive. If only it hadn’t been me. I come back only to visit. A sad girl speaks to the one of edges. Edges where time no longer exists. Or rather, it does; it is where it can start existing. After all, the clock doesn’t contain time; it only keeps track underneath the meadow. But then, I would not live like them; I would not live like those who could freeze and stop it all. Perhaps inside the clock, it – time – doesn’t exist. But who knows? I am only a fern, but a feathery thing hanging from a tree, unraveling forever and flying where I can—hanging, visiting from the bend in the branch. My friends would hide in the crooks of trees. I am not often a tree creature, but when it all disappeared, who was left behind? Soft feathers float across the intense green, flowing and turning with the endless movement of the clearing—the rotating of the forest. There is no sway in the sounds here. Only silence rests above the screams. Their whispers barely reach me. I have learned this by now – I have learned it all.

These cannot be your thoughts anymore but an onslaught of everyone’s. The fern, the fern, is it the one that followed you?

Has it been watching you?

#839

Wild and catching, the tendrils wreck the wood; stony paths grow from petals’ bloom, and nothing meant anything anymore. Simply living and destroying.

Untrusted are the maps of old and new; the maps do not see the pain nor love, nor suffering. The maps do not show who is there. Who we are—only lines and grass. Arrows and directions swirl into a photo, a picture, a portrait of home, of everything.

Dreamt or imagined, the land still wove itself apart and together until it broke in half, and always, always –

A turn that was no longer there.

A stillness that they forgot.

As hours murdered and broke them.

There is nothing to show for it anymore. Only bland destruction.

#1200

You break from that shattering sound.

You near the familiar, even as it falls apart.

You are a wanderer. After all these years, it was the only thing that could make sense. You wave at the tiny ferns as they furl and unfurl in their flight across the sky; they twirl around your fingers, dancing and playing and living as well as they could. Grass feathers on past, but the ferns follow you along as your feet drum the soft ground, and music pulses through your skin, bones, and blood.

“I’ll miss you as you leave,” you tell the fern.

You’d called him Louis, but they don’t know names in the same way you do. They are not just moments in time like the ones you’d abandoned. They are instead raw and real and alive in a wondering way you thought you would never see in another creature. Not even foxes, with their wise posture, glittering eyes, and leaf-like ears. Not even feathers, who grew close to trees oftentimes. No, the rawness in these ferns was simply life, pouring from every frond, exploding into every movement in their flight, some rest against your fingertips, gently gracing your skin with a hesitant landing. Always life. The rock you tap with your foot transforms into a being with ears standing square and alert; the moss ones hitch a ride on its head, providing for it warnings of what’s next as it provides them further movement—a fox watches. Foxes never move. If they ever do, it is in slow, subtle ways as they grow rooted in this ground. You almost wish you were nearer to the sea. You’ve seen it. You’d walked from it. It is said to be capable of creating adventures. But the clearing will have to do. Perhaps it is not even a clearing but a ring of trees dancing around time.

In a way, you never wanted or needed to return; in others, you wanted to live there forever. Where you could choose any moment in time, any moment you lived through, and just freeze, never knowing the future. You could stay there forever. Safe, away from everything. You’d never know what was next, and what’s next could always be amazing or terrifying. Most people choose to stay in their one moment, never moving forward on the hands of the clock, but you did. You kept taking the next second, addicted to the forward motion of time. Oddly enough, even in that, you could feel stuck. You run a finger along the ticks lining your face, tracing the numbers that followed some. Run your hand to the little antlers in your head, to the knob on your nose. How did you escape, and how did the ferns meet you? You didn’t know, and yet you were going back. You think of your son back home, not the one you were returning to…but the son at your new home. He had never been to the clearing; he did not know time the way you did. He is a happy, kind child, and his world is full of gray. You were, too, at one point, so you told him to grow stronger and colder, and now you left him too. You’d go back, you assume after you collect screams from the grass. The ferns follow you, unaware that their escapist friend was a cruel creature. An awful thing with the intention of saving the world but destroying much more. Did feathers hide here anymore? Did the screams scare them off? Did it matter?

You miss the edges every once in a while. Those things of the murderous arrows can be hard to forget. Somehow, it still matters to you. That graveyard was your closest friend for a while. You sigh, hating and leaving everything you are. The fox, still, corners your very mind with its vengeful glare. You adjust the collar of your button shirt and pat the arrow, the sword, tied to your belt. It was a morbid weapon, considering it looked like the arrows that grew on your face. That it probably came from one, like you, who lived in time. You barely know or understand what it represents. You tear one of the sword-arrows you keep now into the ground, shoving soil away, glittering and rotten. Such is the barrel of time you’d come from. Walls smoothly round above you in a caress, an awful thing. You stare at the fox. Barely any grew here anymore.

You feel as if it judges you, anyway. They rightly do so, though they do not know your adventures beyond the ground. Still, you walk up and pet its decaying ear. Lonely, lonely. Too much resonance within this unmoving thing. Sad glinting eyes, soft like petals and sad as the rot that spoils within. The rot within yourself. You didn’t think there were friends in that way, where you grew to love, well, not love, but learn, and with learning, growth arrived, and with that growth, in your case, came regression. The fox knows you are no longer yourself.

“I will be back soon,” you whisper to the ferns that insist on trailing after you.

You wonder if anyone is back there. You wonder. You wait. A traveler approaches you. The traveler wears a cap enclosing their head, and a journal rests in their arms. She approaches beside them, a ghost of what was. You had not known her, perhaps you weren’t even alive to see her, but the traveler carries her history with them. Carries many accounts with them. The ghost vanishes as soon as she appears. You casually lift your hand, quickly dropping it.

“Hello,” the traveler says. “What’s with the return? You may be adding inconsistency to my journal.”

“What do you mean by that?” you ask.

“’Never to return’ doesn’t mean much when the being in question returns, now does it?” they blink at you with large, round eyes, curiosity taming their face as the freckled dots open and close, move in and out across their skin.

You sigh, shoulders heaving. “I didn’t ask for you to document my journey.”

They shrug. “Everyone asks. Everyone screams.”

A brisk breeze blazes by; you shudder as it flutters the collar of your shirt.

“I had nothing to do with that,” you insist.

The traveler paces around you, analyzing your every move. “I see.”

You examine the traveling forest creeping ever slowly toward fields. Moves of everstring bleed from the branches, crawling back if they ever reach the edge of the shade, retreating like a creature stung. An insect crawls to the shade, turning around as soon as it and the string touch, lest it be taken and become one of the wood. The forest circles in a slow crawl, moving along the clockwork.

“Why do you return, then?” they ask.

Your head pulses with heat, and your eyes blink in rapid, unbearable paces. The field, forest, and ferns swim around you as the traveler’s face becomes an odd grin.

Why would you ever return?

You know, in some way, you had no reason but sick, twisted loneliness toying with your mind. Those without time could never understand your kind. Would never understand the workings of the world you came from. They did not know what it was to live with choice. You…did. Would it have been better to stay? Better to hold onto choice instead of being forced to the future? Become weary and dull-eyed like those around you in order to cling to safety? To continue? What did that make you? Wrong? They were in the wrong; they were being hurt. You could see it all over the ticks in their faces. The way the arrows would almost reach their hair. The dullness in their hours and antlers. No more shine in their dark, square eyes. Those features have grown bright in you – alive. Movement instead of breaking. What would they think? The traveler flips through their journal.

“Never to return…” they remind you.

“I’ve returned now. I’ve come back. Tell that to your pages.”

You shove past them without so much as a noise. That means nothing; they’d follow you anyway. It was their clearing as much as it was yours at this point, anyway…perhaps you had become more the visitor. This wasn’t home to you; not anymore. The traveler’s gaze follows you. You’d seen it all happen before. You did only have choice, and some would choose wrong. Perhaps it was too long ago for you to believe in the memory. Perhaps it was too long for you to come up with some explanation. You left. That was that. You are still terrified of moments. Moments could be preserved, but it had driven them to the edge. It had broken them. In some way, it was okay and all right preserving moments, but only one. You didn’t know if those outside time would get that. A moment can be discarded, and they were so often afraid to do that. You can never change the afterward; you can never change the moment, only preserve it until it becomes harmful. Still, keep the moment and don’t discard it; hold on, hold on, hold on…There was safety in that broken smile. Surely, there was safety in that broken smile. Safety in the fact they could no longer remember nor care about anything before. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s all right in the end, after all.

Everything’s okay. It’ll stay like this forever.

“It’ll stay okay forever,” – said with the most tragic face I’d ever seen.

A few of you had tried to go forward; a few got addicted to the forward passage of time. But even then, some of you fell into preserved moments; some chose their second and never left. Some of you decided the known was easier, but you wouldn’t forget the shaking, the tears lacing smiling eyes. It was nothing to be overlooked nor anything you’d want to remember. M had stayed, confined to the best time; it was safety and comfort he relied on as you watched them reach deeper and deeper into sameness. Their eyes grew dull and weary. Their skin cracked. And you watched. You were not about to be part of it. They started falling apart. You don’t want to think of it anymore, but it is always something that happens. Always a loop. Always a moment until they snap at you and tell you it’s all right, and they can end up with life for themselves. No permanent hurt. A cushion of safety. A deceiving happiness as they manufacture a mask. A mask, a choice they’d turned to be joy—a weaved emotion. You grew tired of weaved emotions. The traveler stares back as your thoughts turn to anger.

The clock lives below.

“You’d never lived in a world with time,” you say.

The traveler considers. “No, never.”

“Then how can you say anything to me?”

“I live. That’s all there is.”

“They nearly died, but, of course, we can’t do that. We can’t have death, can we?”

“Not all of you live; your weapon is proof. Are you all right?”

“Better than those of edges.”

“Expired time?”

“There is no choice here.”

Back and forth. You and the traveler – there is no choice.

“And you had a choice in the realm you so longed to escape?”

You jump back at the question. “All we had was choice.”

“As for staying and leaving?” They wave their hand to the side.

You turn to them, blinking your dark, square eyes once again.

“I suppose…I wish you could experience what it is to live there for yourself. Where you have all the time and all the choice you could ever want.”

And you almost do, you almost wish to see the traveler choose where their heart lay and then begin lying to themselves about – but not, you couldn’t. You can’t wish it on anyone. Everyone has these thoughts, these moments, even her. Even them. You’ve lost. You’ve wanted to see what’s next, even when everyone else was lost...because you couldn’t become those who didn’t move forward.

“So, he cried, but the tears only fell once. ‘No, I am safe here. There is nothing for me going forward.’ And he walked with a shudder in his step and quaking fear in his eyes as he wandered back to safety.”

You almost shudder at your thoughts. What does memory mean to you at this point?

You couldn’t become those people—those who were once friends.

Because there is still a point in life for those, who risk taking it. You’ve found that and never gave up. You were not of edges; you were not even of frozen time. You are of discovery, and you’d hoped it could have been that way forever, but forever hurts as you’ve found, so you let yourself be a monster.

#32019

The truest allowance of joy was one Amalie had never known was able to exist. She was here; the clock’s hands on her face ticked slowly and slowed until they stopped—the second hand on this one moment – this one wonderous thing. Where everything was perfect, and nothing would change, she leaves those who stayed before her behind and those who chose to go after to be on their own. Amalie did not want life anymore; she wanted this. She stays in this section of the clock, never being able to change anything. A mass of grass shaped into a flying creature, unaffected by time, green threads weaving by one another as it flew above this world.

Amalie did not have the truest allowance of joy, but she had the only amount of joy she ever thought she would have. She cannot go back, only forward or remain where she is. The clock is always in motion. It does not matter. Amalie would not reach the end of time.