Time on a Window
“Who blinks over there?” I ask.
“I keep measure,” says the Clock, voice crisp, a ruler made of teeth.
“Measure of what?”
“Your path,” it answers, “through everything.”
Everything smells of toast, varnish, and lavender soap. The floor holds the weight of a table and four chairs; the ceiling holds a lamp that hums. Between them hangs air for flying and learning, so I lift and stitch a zigzag through the room. My wings beat: one-two-three-five-eight. Counting settles my small body into order.
“Faster,” whispers the Fan from the ceiling, starting its slow revolution. “Taste the wind.”
I sprint the round. The room stretches, a soft elastic pulled broad. Two ticks ago I perched; two ticks later I finish the loop, yet my inner metronome holds fewer beats than I expect. Breath never belonged to me, yet something in me reaches for it and finds a thinner thread.
“You felt that?” the Clock says, pleased. “Speed trims your own minutes. You roam far, you sip fewer of them.”
“So I live longer if I race?”
“You trade,” says the Clock. “Fewer sips for you between my winks; more distance, more world. Tiny, yet true.”
I hover by the sugar bowl and test another thought. “What about height?” The lampshade glows warm yellow; the tile near the drain feels heavy, a hush that clings to feet.
“Climb,” says the Lamp, bright with pride. “Come sit with me.”
I rise. Air turns sweet and light, a syrup up here. My skin—thin silk, exact and clever—registers a whisper of difference. The Clock’s ticks step apart a hair. Up here my seconds widen, opening petals. Down near the floor, with its thick gravity and its deep hum, they tighten.
“So higher means more time?” I ask.
“For you,” says the Clock. “The heavy world pulls on everyone’s minutes. Loosen that pull, and your own beat opens.”
A spoon clinks the edge of a mug. The kettle exhales. A doorbell rings in the front room, and a toast pops in the same breath—at least from the perch on the windowsill. I dart low across the counter, wings carving through warm currents, and the toast now arrives before the bell. I dash toward the hallway and the bell recovers the lead.
“Now slides,” the Clock says. “At once for one place, staggered for another. Choose a path, choose a order.”
“So there isn’t one Now for the house?”
“There are many Nows, stitched to many paths. Yours belongs to your flight.”
I rest a heartbeat on the blue porcelain bull by the flour jar, then lift again. The jar wears a fog of dust on its lid. I land, draw a tiny arc with my front feet, and the arc stays. A footprint carved in powder. At the stove, a sugar cube drifts into tea, edges softening, angles surrendering. Heat moves flavor outward. A drop of jam creeps across the plate, turning clarity into smear.
“That river,” says the Kettle, “always flows in this direction. Sweetness spreads; footprints fade; eggs shatter; heat drifts into the room and never gathers back into a single bright point on its own. That current gives your life an arrow.”
“An arrow toward what?”
“Toward more ways to arrange things,” the Kettle says, proud and a little sad. “Toward mess. Toward memory.”
Memory arrives for me in flickers: where I first tasted orange peel, the blue vein in a broken tile, the curtain’s pilled edge. These arrive with weight; tomorrows carry only outline, buzzing with maybe. I can move into them, yet I cannot nibble them yet.
“Why remember back and never forward?” I ask the Clock.
“Because the kitchen began this morning smooth, low on crumbs and fingerprints,” the Clock replies. “You carry records of that smoothness. Futures branch wide and multiple, far harder to bottle. Your head holds what came from the narrower mouth.”
A spider in the corner listens, patient in her geometry. “Webs build,” she says, “and unbuild. I pull silk from inside me and make a map for dinner. Strands loosen, dust settles, a human hand destroys, or a grape moth gifts me a feast. I read the past in snapped threads. Futures offer a menu, many choices, few guarantees.”
“Do futures already stand somewhere?” I ask, curious now in a fierce way.
The window answers this time, glass cool against my feet. “Imagine every room of this day stacked into a honeycomb—each cell a whole kitchen: before toast, during toast, after toast. The comb extends beyond sight. You fly through it along a path that bends with speed and dips with gravity. All the cells exist in relation, yet you taste only the cell you touch.”
“So the kitchen already stands everywhere in that comb?”
“Some say so,” the window hums. “Others swear only this cell lives, and the next appears when you step into it. Your wings must choose how to believe. Either way, your path carves meaning.”
I bank toward the ceiling to taste the broader seconds again. The Fan lifts me with a tender spiral. Down below, the human raises the mug; steam blooms; the jam continues its slow empire across porcelain. In a cupboard, a jar of coriander dreams of stew. On the sill, ants discuss a sugar raid in a line that glitters with resolve.
I test the edges of the comb with experiments. I skim a circle around the room faster and faster until furniture blurs into stripes; my inner beats compress, the Clock’s teeth seem busier, though the dial keeps perfect calm. I sink toward the drain and feel a tug on minutes; I roost high on the lampshade and feel a loosening. I land near the sugar cube dissolving in amber; I dip a foreleg into that warm map. Sweetness rushes into me—movement from dense to spread. My body understands that arrow in one sip.
“Time gives me choices,” I say. “Race and keep more of my own beats between your winks, or dawdle and gather stories that grow most lavish when I sit high. Glide through a hundred different Nows that belong to different heights, different speeds. Follow the river from tidy to scattered, from footprint to blur.”
“Carry this,” the Clock says. “Cause before effect along your path. Remember the way back smells of toast and varnish while the way forward smells of possibilities and dust that has not settled yet.”
The spider laughs softly. “Dust always wins in the end,” she says, with admiration rather than gloom. “Until then, thread your web.”
I lift again, full of sugar and lessons. I try a bravery I invent for this moment: I fly straight up, into the sweet wide seconds near the lamp, and hold there, letting the Fan comb my wings. From here the whole kitchen arranges itself into a score—kettle hisses, Clock ticks, human hums, jam creeps, ants march. Each part enters in time, each part leans on the last.
“Time rests in relationships,” the window adds, voice bright through the glass. “You hear the music because pieces connect. Pull one piece away, and the melody changes.”
I test that too. I stop counting my Fibonacci prayer and let the room lead. The music continues; I rejoin with one-two-three-five-eight, and the cadence folds me back in. The difference feels small and also enormous, a secret between my wings and the Clock.
“Thank you,” I say to everything that answered me. “For the measure, for the arrow, for the many Nows.”
“Bring the world back to us,” the Lamp says, warm and proud. “Each circuit adds detail to this cell.”
So I do. I fly a new path, one that brushes the coriander jar, inspects the hairline crack in the blue bull, traces the scar of a long-ago kettle spill, and grazes the string of ants. I carry crumbs of each back to the high perch, and the seconds widen for me again, a gift earned by altitude. Below, entropy continues its parade—toast crumbs scatter, steam thins, laughter from the hall fades to a shape in memory.
I hold the whole morning in my small body—past tucked behind my eyes in tiny bright frames, futures humming open at the edge of every wingbeat, and this present, this cell in the honeycomb, full of light and sugar and ticking teeth.
Then I aim at the doorway where different air waits, and I go.
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