what is time, to me?

and what am i, to time?

what is time, but the awareness of presence? the weight of it, how it rests between our palms, atop our shoulders, in the set of our jaws?

time is something that sits within us since our first taste of air, our first glimpse of light. time is there every step of the way, cataloging, witnessing, as we go through and cross off every first to five hundredth, watching as things lose their shiny-newness, watching us as we get used to the way of things, as we begin to make our own rules; as we begin to make ourselves.

it is easiest to think of time in this way – relation. it is the most prominent way of experiencing it: the weariness of ageing, lines etched into our skin, the things we have kept safely tucked away in our pockets; the experiences we've had, the things we've lived and learned, the people we have met and the impacts we have made.

and even before us, generations upon generations of people living lives as vivid and real as our own. we walk down the same avenues, live on the same land, eat the same food. i swear, sometimes, you can almost see them, between the bricks and the fields and rays of light, dancing. this way, it is easy to think legacy, to think: this is what i am leaving behind.

now, think to be remembered, think to be seen. think: are they the same?

time begs to be spoken of. time waltzes through documentary interviews, rock climbs through canyons, steps lightly through memorials and graveyards. time roots itself in stains and scars and hastily hidden marks on once-newly painted walls. time clicks and we hear it, we are always hearing it. we are always stepping to it's beat.

but time is more than just what is easily accessible, more than tangibility.

think of the first tooth you lost as a child. think of every swipe your tongue would make against the then-newly-hollow space. less a wound and more a void, an impermanence, that we were only just becoming aware of. how did you hold the fact that you are able to lose pieces of yourself? without permission, without control? have you ever gotten used to the feeling?

time can be seen in things other than ourselves. think of things with an exact number of possibilities that are never known until the last moment they are able to give: pens with a specific amount of love letters within them, the number of old voicemails you'll keep on your phone, the number of miles your car will drive; all of them unknown, mysteries and questions but most importantly – possibilities. time is not a cruel enough thing to take that from us.

think of everything that is half-gone already: cracked mugs and faded stickers and cracks in the sidewalk pavement. think of the material-weariness of things, how time makes ruins of everything. how time makes us into many different versions of ourselves. how does time pick and choose the changing? what would happen to us, to everything, if we could control it?

but is time something that we can trust? is it as much a constant as we believe it is?

have you ever fallen asleep without meaning to, and woke up without knowing the time? what could you do there, in that world unknowable? unbound by the parameters of time? at the same time, there is something true in knowing, in understanding the fact that everything lies ahead of us. there is something to trust, there, like the comfort in seeing the sun go down knowing it will rise again in the morning, and for each morning to come.

time is a thing easily bruised by nostalgia, easily warped by the wanting of what we have already known, already survived. the soft glitch of an old tape, playing video games street-light by street-light buckled in the backseat while traveling; time as the grittiness of the edges of things we cannot fully bring into a modern sharpness. time is looking back and looking forward and looking down at your shoes, right here; all of it, and still not fully grasping the wholeness of it.

with that awareness, the weight of the presence of time, it becomes an occupied space that leaves room for loneliness.

i don't know what i am to time. isn't it a difficult thing, to question that? to stand in the face of something so big, larger than anything, encompassing everything edge to edge, and try to say your own name?

in comparison, i may be small, and unlit. a blip in something so much bigger and brighter than anything i could imagine. i am a passing thing, i know this. but strangely, it doesn't bother me. i want to be everything, even still. even now. even if it's just for an hour.

even if it's just for right now, and one moment more.