Time has always been obstinate. Slow-moving, like a bottle of honey tipped over onto its side, when you’re itching for it to just move a little faster. One hand taps arrhythmically on your desk, the other curls around your backpack strap, and the second hand inches past the 30-second mark and up, up, up …
The bell rings, and you’re out the door before you know you’ve moved. The restlessness that hums deep in your marrow is loud enough to drown out your conscious thoughts. The world is too wide for you to wait patiently for time and its games.
There’s graph paper scattered over your desk, a crumpled and over-loved script at the bottom of your backpack, your friends laughing like a familiar melody. Your mind jumps ahead a second, a minute, an hour. How can you live in the moment when there are so many moments to come?
Time is an hourglass you flip back and forth too quickly, before the sand has a chance to settle at the bottom. At least you used to.
Now, time is rushing. For the first time, you wish that it were something tangible that you could cradle in your hands. You can trace the hands of a clock, adjusting them minutely in either direction, but in the end, what does it change? Your alarm clock beeps quietly in your dark bedroom, the red numbers thirty minutes ahead, but you always have to remind yourself that what you see is not reality.
The future stretches in front of you. Stiff dorm room beds and giant lecture halls and an answer to the question you never quite knew how to answer: “What are you going to do when you grow up?” It seems that the world is racing ahead while you simply stand rooted to the road.
In the meantime, you beg time to move like honey again. There must be a way to linger in the theater with a microphone taped to your cheek and butterflies in your stomach. There must be a way to stay in the classroom for just a minute longer, scratching out another line into your notebook. There must be a way to inhale the crisp morning air and hold it in your lungs so you will never forget how it feels.
The clock ticks, the second hand inching past the 30-second mark and up, up, up. 3 p.m. is hovering on the edge of the horizon, but you force yourself to stay in this moment, where it is 2:59 and the clock hand is at the 43-second mark.
The bell rings, and you stay where you are, listening to it hum until it abruptly cuts off. The world is too wondrous for you to not savor every moment.
