Time

Time is a woman who has seen everything and is so rarely surprised. She’s that one friend that is so hard to buy gifts for, not because She has everything, not in that “if She needs it She’ll buy it Herself” way, She doesn’t need anything.

Your breath held in a moment is all She asks for, year after year.

She smells of stillness. Fresh in feeling, not like a breeze, not like newly cut grass. It’s that breath in the back of your throat when a realization hits. It’s nothing and everything all at once. The kind of scent you can’t name, but once you’ve had it in you, you breathe for it over and over again.

Time keeps two marbles in Her pocket. They’re smooth and cool and click rhythmically as She moves through the world. The faster we run from Time, the faster they click. They’ll pinch your fingers if you put them in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

Time shows up the way you show up for Her. She sticks to you in the shape that you allow.

The more present you are, the slower She goes, because Time wants to be seen. She wants to be experienced.

But Time is always seen through someone else’s lens, distorted by fear, by control, by expectations.

We mistake the lines Time draws across our face as deterioration, when really She caresses us with love and admiration.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds, time holds every gash, scar, word inside of Her so that you don’t have to.

Time has experienced so much violence, She’s been wasted, She’s been killed. You race Her, you try to outwit Her, you keep Her, you try to undo Her.

You tell Her She is not real…

When you feel that you have Her you wring out all that makes Her wonderful.

Yet She keeps showing up. Steady handed. With love.

And that’s how we know Time is a woman.

And in those few moments that someone sits with Her in stillness, not to study Her, not to beat Her, not to bend Her, but to wonder who She is beneath it all, beneath the theories.

When they ask Her: “Who are you when no one is trying to make you mean something?”

That is when She holds Her breath. That is when She stops the sands.

If only people knew how much Time truly loves them.