There is an intimacy to collecting the pieces of a life. Fragments, letters, journals — narratives split and divided. Truth in small moments connected through time. Time folds. Time binds. Time collapses. One moment strung across a sea.
Change exists within fragments. An empty cocoon. A child’s toy left in the garden. An unfinished quilt set over the back of a couch. We take note of fragments. The small moments. We notice when our friend stops wearing the pair of earrings they were given last Christmas. We notice when our child becomes too heavy, too old to keep carrying around in our arms.
We notice when our patterns change.
Our bodies are split in time. I write to myself from past to present and present to past, all with the future thrown in for good measure. What does it mean to imagine a future? Is it sleek skyscrapers or dusty, desert roads? What does it mean to imagine a past? Is it candlestick holders stuffed into a single suitcase? Or a photo filled with people whose names you can’t quite remember?
Our futures and pasts are not just our own. We share these things with our ancestors, our descendants, our kin. We do not exist in a vacuum. We are linked. Across time, across that sea. Or maybe we are a single being split into a family line.
Time collapses into a moment, a single fragment. Time divides into generations. We stitch it back up with letters and words. We look for patterns and embellish them with memory.
But everything collapses eventually. Fragments are thrown into the sea. We are left to paddle in the waves and build something new.
Our fragments, the little moments from our lives, wash up on a shore. Glass tumbled through time, catching the eye of the sun. Sooner or later, a child will pluck a handful of these fragments from the sand. It will be their turn to hold the past and future and present within their fingertips.
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