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