Hourglass by Yumna Ahmad (17, Canada)

Be fickle with your time. I had come to notice for centuries the easy way it bends. Look now, through the grooves of this wooden home, at me. Falling, falling, falling.
    
So many of the ticks of that rounding clock are wasted away to petty wonder, fears and panic of how it will fall, frantic considerations of what could be done to make every last pebble in the hourglass worth its plunge. ​

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Falling, falling, falling. Step back a little. See the blood around my chest. See the darkness in this home. Do you want to die alone? Another step up through the stairs, graze your hands against the railings. There are flowers on the shelves, outside of their vases, bare, nude, approaching death. I would leave them there, pick them in the mornings and settle them sweetly around the house, a potent reminder of how easily time slipped away, how easily those dulcet petals rot to brown crisps of ash, how easily a larger life was next. 
    
Another rule in being boisterous with time. Do not think you can outsmart it. Time waits for no one, but it does not run to catch up to you, either. You cannot race to the peak and yearn for nostalgia if you did not stop to make any memories along the way. Learn from my jolting body on the floor, see the blood, see the darkness. Falling, falling. 
    
Take a step around the house. You are as light and delicate as a flower, and will not disturb my meeting with the Reaper. Do you see a single photograph? Trace the empty, laminate films, where there could have been sun-lit smiles, cheeky grins, reaching oceans, tampered leaves, and always, the uncaptured moon. I would smile if my mouth weren’t dropped in horror. Did you know when you die, your face remains as your last expression? 
    
Ah, the bedroom. Always made, always empty. I did not sleep often. It was too close to death for me. I could not waste a single speck of sand. But sand cannot harden to glass with a single speck. I suppose I do wish I slept in a little longer. I could imagine now, curling into day-warmed blankets with damp flesh soaking up the sheets, toes curling as I stretched awake, allowing the sun its duty to bathe me in fresh light. Instead I would throw myself up, stagger out, half-awake. Fall into the sink. Fall into the shower. Fall out the door. I lived like a woman already dying. That was how I liked it. Cannot waste a single drop of sand. 
    
People were pieces I couldn’t let go of. I was the uncommitted, leaving sleepless goodbyes to men and women who’s beds I recognized just barely less than my own, after a night of forcing pleasure I thought I deserved, giving only when I knew I’d receive. Sometimes they’d remember me, see me later in their lives, and I wouldn’t give them the time of day. But I knew it. 
    
Step away from the bedroom. There are too many clocks in there. Do you see how numbers have become my life? 2 PM meant the day was ending fast. 9 PM meant get your laughs in now. Pretend you are so happy. I have lived every second I could be awake for, but can you believe I don’t remember a second of it? There was no time for pictures, no time for friends, I had to see everything, love everything, and how could I have been chasing happiness for so long and still have never known truly what it was?
    
And for some sick, karmic reason, it is now that I feel it. A burst of mirth in my blood-chipped lips, lying on the floor. Falling, falling, gone. Do you know how fun it was to lie on the floor? It’s like a mattress of wood. It’s different. It’s new. It takes everything away from the idea of awake. And sand drips from my hourglass but it shimmers when it reaches the bottom. 
    
But it’s already over. It’s already over. Don’t be fickle with your time. And please, if you are afraid it is wasting, do not run away. Time does not chase you. It is slow, like the tortoise. 

It surpasses and laughs. 
    

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