In Due Time

“To my dearest friend Isabella, whom my words could never ring fully, and my meanings exaggerated, though my memories ever happy.”

Tick tock goes the clock, tick tock tick tock it goes twice more. Tumbling down it crashes and bang it rings, again and again. In a coffin it wobbles, mallets hammering upon one another. Nine o’clock read the clock, tickety tock, tickety tock.

Perhaps the steady rhythm, or such precise shuddering sends each hair on the back standing in a march formation. As sure as the soldiering clock, each dagger of sunlight pierces the fort of curtain-smothered darkness such a thing is secluded to. The tick tock that burns as righteously as the thumping of my heart, etching into the very fabric of what I dream. The golden light sweeps over the blind echoing tick tock, immersing me in a constant ping of sound.

This body twitches and squirms, writhing within the sheets of fabric it’s enveloped in. Strands of hair rustle against the colourless pillow. Scratches of trolleys pierce through such thin walls, adding layers upon the canvas of running ink. Antennas ruffle under the duvet, spraying colour towards the stencilling. Eyes are shocked open, though no light falls through the ocean of stony grey.