Poised to sprint
skinny flint ready to ignite.
She stands leaning at the beginning of the steep winding path.
Up then down, a spring on speed.
“How long did I take Grandad?” she gasps, leaning over the rail like a spent ragdoll.
He looks confused “Ah maybe a minute..” He studies the second hand like a math equation.
She understands his cognitive struggle.
“I’ll do it again!”
and pelts off like thunderous hail.
She returns steamy, moist vapour condensing as stippled diamantes on her forehead.
She points to his watch.
“How long?” quick pants, the speed of a hummingbird’s wings.
“Maybe a minute” her Grandad replies.
His face crumpled, a page not everyone can read.
Her fluttering body settles, at least he had watched her take flight.
Later that night she pauses at his side, Grandad lived alone.
She slips 50c into his suit coat pocket, the same suit he wore every Saturday to visit them.
She thinks he looks poorer than her.
He once prepared a meal of spam, peas and spuds for the family
an act of gratitude he explained for all her mum did.
Gifts like gestures can only be measured by the change in temperature of the recipient’s blood.
She’d received gifts in the past that had formed sharp icicles in her blood, stabbing gentle capillaries and damaging their ability to return goodness to her heart.
Grandad listened to her winding stories. She treasured the lime/pink plastic jewellery set for her birthday from Woolworths and the time he had taken to repair her broken pink choker that prior, had sat on the mantle for a year.
These gifts circulated in her blood like sweet warm tea.
She has forgotten the untimed races.
Become a Medium member
20 yrs on, she is timing a man preparing for his “physical.”
“God how could you do that twice, what’s wrong with you?” he declared staring at the stopwatch she held in her hand.
Her face an unlined page, wanting to write another story.
Multiple alarms, highlighted diaries, friendly reminders, all attempts to stay on course…
Like a heavy fog in summer, she cannot see her way through this second-hand blindness.
20 yrs on
she is all noughts no crosses
an abstract painting on legs
a poem of many titles.
Her “Timeless Award” graces the cover of Time Magazine.
On the mantle, where the dying pink choker lay, now regally stands the
“ Non-Linear Trophy” presented by the International Guild of Psychic Accountants.
She picks up her Grandfather’s fobwatch
an Elgin wind up, early 19th century.
The unwound suddenly kicks and ticks into life for a few minutes
like a bird resuscitated in her warm-blooded hands.
They who own time are full of it
They have no need to ration it
They give it away as a new morning.
To all in sundry, her Grandad had timed out
the ticker in his old suit quietly tocked out
peacefully in sleep as he had hoped.
Neither she nor he, could pinpoint Time like co-ordinates in the galaxies.
Instead, they had become light years running up steep winding paths
without it.
Photo by Oreva Ahia on Unsplash