Unsent letter #4

Dear You,

I have ter­rible, won­der­ful news.

Ter­ribly, the clocks are going for­ward an hour tomor­row even­ing. You tell me, mean­while, that they are going back an hour the morn­ing after. I think that’s the order of our disorder.

Or is our time on this mor­tal coil mov­ing for­ward an hour and back an hour at pre­cisely the same moment dur­ing dawn’s early light, which is after mid­day in your books? Some­time soon. Some­time never. Whenever. How the world turns. Onwards. Inex­or­ably onwards.

I get so con­fused these days. These days when time has come to mean so little other than minutes tick­ing away faster than they should. Each second lasts an hour, yet each pre­cious hour is never long enough.

In my dreams, in my second life, it is 6.37pm for etern­ity. Not quite dark. Not quite light. I will con­fess that It’s an arbit­rary time, plucked from a space between the hour and minute hands purely for its moment­ary rel­ev­ance. Do not get hung up on its sign­fic­ance. It’s beside the point. I am try­ing to be poetic, deep and mean­ing­ful. And failing.

Stop. No more. It’s quite irrel­ev­ant. I am irrel­ev­ant. We could can­cel each other out into com­plete and utter non-entities, prefer­ably for the rest of now and then, yes­ter­day and tomorrow.

Oh yes, the won­der­ful news. I know you. You want the won­der­ful news, don’t you?

Mira­cu­lously, it seems that I have broken every single timepiece in my home. Clocks have melted — almost as if they were doused in pet­rol and set alight to the accom­pani­ment of vaguely frightened but manic laughter — whilst watches have stopped. Just stopped. Dead. With the aid of a finely placed ham­mer. It is truly remarkable.

Though I can’t see you, please don’t look at me that way. You are very well aware that I own neither matches nor a ham­mer, and any­one who claims to know any dif­fer­ent is a clock-watching liar.

Yours forever,
An Unre­li­able Witness