Up above the street, I glimpse clocks, monitoring my hurried steps between one corner of Broadway and another. It is approximately 900 seconds between home and office, between new apartment building and former furniture store, along streets lined with graffiti.
Time towers higher than I’ve ever seen it here, so much closer to that orange setting sun than I would have imagined. The clocks pull me as if they have strings dangling from their hands. “Beat this,” they say. “Beat this.”
On a side street in the Mission, the wind knocked chimes together, the sound like fairy dust falling on the sunlit pavement. I stopped to appreciate the ambient sparkling. I’d had rays in my eyes all day, it seemed, but not a moment’s desire to squint.
The solar system orbits above the waiting area. I can’t remember when I first noticed it, but I know I had been coming in and out of this airport for months. Possibly years. To those who look straight ahead, the only sign its there stands on a stanchion tucked by the window.
Until I looked up at the sienna-gold sun that caught my eye, there had been worlds up there I had managed to miss. I made a point, after that, to look in all directions.
“How long will night be?” I asked from my yellow bed just after the light went out. Even guarded by stuffed animals, I needed more information before falling into the night.
“About eight hours,” she replied from the doorway each time, her answer always reassuring enough that I had no trouble closing my eyes long enough to sleep.
This was not the first tree she had gone away from, not the last one she would abandon for a new path. It will be the one thing I’ll miss, she thought, her hand on the bark, the blue sky and pink flowers above her. This is the rub of moving: the things left behind are often as important as the things packed and carried.
I took the bed gliding back and forth as a sign. This was no tornado, spinning everything scattered. This was no sharp, stiffening blizzard.
Iowa, not usually earthquake country, trembled beneath me, shook me loose.
Rain falls here and tornado weather approaches, the spinning atmosphere inducing nausea. Planes take off ahead of the storm. Planes land in more hospitable climates. Clocks, wound tight, spring forward.
Look ahead: resolution awaits.
100 Proof 