Thievery
Creating a new sense of time
Sometimes, when night is approaching and I’m seeing the sun creep below the horizon and the air turn a stale blue, I like to imagine it’s actually dawn and the sun is on its opposite trajectory to become familiar with a new day. I feel the world awaken inch by inch, a drop of dew float off, an overwhelming sense that the air is meeting something. I am inventing moments to freeze. I place myself in this time of day I used to see often, like at middle school sleepovers when we’d egg each other on to see the night through. Or in high school, when I’d drag myself out of bed for an early practice for a game that would make me cry often and still haunt my dreams 12 years later. Or in college, when beer and youth kept me talking to people I no longer remember. I place myself in the light that told me hours had somehow passed on the first night I ever spent with my now husband, and we need to rest for a few hours before he had to head to work, a deadline he knew was approaching quickly but stayed up anyway. I sometimes see that light come through our bedroom window after I lie our son down again, a full belly of milk pulling him back to sleep, and I think to myself that I could go downstairs and start my coffee and pick up my pen for a bit. But sleep is treasured these days these months this life, so instead I pretend dusk is dawn before suddenly it’s my own bedtime and it feels like the few moments I had to wonder about this world have slipped away again. I keep thieving time from myself. It seems like no matter how I intend to use these moments, the most they are good for is slipping away and I am always wondering where the time has gone.
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