I last wrote in May, six months and two seasons ago. This year any marking of time passing feels like a joke: every day is the same, my small routine etched in me like the dip in a stone step from the repeat of so many feet over so many years. Can time be concentrated? There’s too much of it and it’s the wrong texture: viscous, choking.
My kitten has become a cat; my nephew, who I have not met, is crawling. I have these touchstones, proof that time is moving as it always has. I kick my way through red and gold leaves as I walk through the park, the sunlight bright but diffuse. Days ends quickly. My walk home from work is now lit by street lamps and headlights, not the fading pink sky.
My partner tells me that humans have no innate sense of time passing, that we use external cues. This year, I watch change happen around me — and even to me, my period a regular cycle — and feel stuck.
