The Moment The Clock Skipped Your Name

The second hand jumped forward and I knew you had just died somewhere I could not reach.

The kitchen clock made a small sharp sound like a breath caught too late and then continued ticking as if nothing had happened. Sunlight lay across the table in a clean square and dust drifted lazily through it. I stood holding a mug that had gone cold and felt the moment lodge itself under my ribs before any phone rang or any voice confirmed what my body already knew. The world did not pause for you. It never does. But something inside the room had hesitated and that hesitation felt personal.

I did not cry then. I watched the clock instead. I watched the second hand move in obedient circles and waited for it to betray itself again. It did not. When the call finally came I answered calmly and thanked the person for telling me and said I understood. Afterward I sat at the table until the sunlight shifted and the square moved on without me.

The first time you came back the clocks noticed before I did. It was evening and the apartment held the blue quiet that comes just before night fully commits. Every clock in the room slowed by a fraction of a breath. Not stopped. Just uncertain. I felt it then like pressure behind my eyes. When I looked up you were standing near the doorway with your hands in your pockets as if unsure where to put them now.

You looked like yourself but thinner at the edges. Time did not sit on you the way it used to. You said my name and the clocks all skipped a beat together. The sound was soft but unmistakable. I swallowed and nodded once because anything more felt dangerous.

We did not embrace. We stood where we were and let the seconds stretch. You told me you could not stay long. You told me you had learned how to step into the moments that did not quite belong to anyone. You gestured toward the clocks and smiled faintly. I wanted to reach for you. I kept my hands at my sides and felt the wanting burn clean and contained.

After that you came when time loosened. At dusk. At dawn. In the small hours when sleep thinned and dreams hovered close to waking. The clocks slowed each time you arrived. Not enough to stop the world. Just enough to notice if you were paying attention. I learned to measure my days by their hesitation.

We sat together without touching. Sometimes on the couch. Sometimes at the table. Sometimes on the floor with our backs against opposite walls. You told me what it felt like to exist between ticks. You said it was quiet there. I asked if it was lonely. You thought about it and said it depended on what you remembered bringing with you.

Winter sharpened everything. The clocks ticked louder in the cold. You appeared more clearly then as if the world tightened around you and held your shape. I noticed that when you leaned closer the ticking slowed further. Once it stopped entirely for the space of a breath and we both froze aware of the power of that nearness.

I began wearing a watch again though I did not need it. The weight of it comforted me. When you noticed you smiled and said I always liked knowing where I was in time. I said nothing because the truth was I was afraid of losing my place.

Spring softened the edges of days. Light lingered longer and you lingered less. Sometimes you arrived already fading. You told me staying near me pulled you too far forward or too far back. You said love had gravity even now. The clocks chimed uneasily when you said it.

Our romance lived in restraint. In the way you said my name only once each visit. In the way I never asked how to make you stay. In the way the clocks always resumed their steady rhythm when you left as if relieved and disappointed at the same time. Desire threaded itself through patience and made something that ached without demanding release.

The cost became clear slowly. I began losing time. Small pieces at first. Moments I could not account for. A kettle boiling dry. A sunset I did not remember watching. The watch on my wrist ran fast when you were near and slow when you were gone. You noticed before I admitted it. You always had been better at noticing me.

One night heavy with rain and the smell of wet asphalt you stood closer than ever. The clocks slowed so much their ticking stretched into something like breath. You said my name and then stopped as if listening to the sound of it inside you. You told me I was starting to slip. You told me loving you now meant standing partly where you stood. Between moments. Between choices.

I felt the pull then fully. The temptation to let time loosen its hold and live where seconds did not press so hard. To stay with you in the quiet gaps. The idea felt like relief and erasure all at once. I looked at your face and saw the tenderness there and the warning you did not voice.

When I spoke my voice shook only once. I said I loved you. I said I loved the way time moved us forward even when it hurt. I said I would not leave my life unfinished to join you in its pauses. The clocks around us resumed their ticking one by one like a held breath releasing.

You nodded as if this was the answer you had prepared yourself for. You stepped closer and for a moment our foreheads touched. Time stopped completely. No ticking. No movement. Just warmth and knowing and the fullness of a goodbye that did not rush itself.

When the clocks started again you were gone.

Summer came and went. Autumn followed. I fixed the kitchen clock when it began to skip and smiled at the memory of its small rebellion. Sometimes when the light shifts and the room grows very still I feel a hesitation in the seconds and think of you standing just out of sight listening.

Time moves forward now without apology. I move with it. And every so often when a clock falters for a breath I let myself remember the way loving you taught me that even moments we cannot keep can still be held.