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.”
“I’m not really gone,” she said, and she touched him on the shoulder so he’d know she was there. But they both knew how it really was, how she was nothing more than starlight on ocean swells, destined to disappear by morning.
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.
Like dogs, they circle each other, shoulders hunched forward, lips curled. She is the heart of the matter—they cannot help but scrap.
She had worn soft the handles of the tools available to her, but abandoned them when it came to the work of her heart. No matter how many times he reminded her she couldn’t make things happen alone, she tried anyway. She tried and she tried, bare-handed, fingernails splitting with the effort.
100 Proof 