197 Take a Minute

It only takes a minute to say goodbye. Unrequited, it takes a lifetime to get that minute back. Open-ended goodbyes, thus, don't end.

It only takes a minute to ruin a child's life. Minutes release years of worms out of the can. They're worm-years.

It only takes a minute to do wrong, but an eternity to right that wrong. Perhaps in eternity, being dead and gone, from the place where time is still measured in minutes for the ones left behind.

After our minutes are over, were they any better than an ape's?

A minute is a tick on a clock; a heartbeat is attack on a life: we only get so many. They are greedy fingers that keep score on the abacus we live by. They are thick, clumsy gorilla fingers, sometimes dragging down higher-valued tokens in one swoop. This is how minutes often determine the years we suffer.

Once upon a time, a year slipped out of a bag because of a misplaced minute. Cracked eggs, impossible to repair, might just as well be eaten, swallowed with one's pride. Yet the bitterest pill is the tonic of time, waiting for indigestion from a rogue minute to pass--eventually--as bodily waste.

All wasted minutes end up our sewage.

There once was a man who realized he had only a minute more to live...

He spent most of it thinking about what he should do with it.

Should he make peace with God? Finally tell his loved ones what they wanted to hear? Forgive his enemies? Masturbate? Reminisce? Visit the photo album? Write a last will and testament? Sing a favorite song? Savor a last breath?

Choosing one's very last meaningful minute is daunting.

When that minute--the rest of his life--was nearly expired, he had decided to use the seconds remaining to laugh at his whole life. The missed goodbyes. The near-misses. The wrongs not righted. Children carelessly raised. The years he paid for the minutes he squandered.

He considered it a statement.

It was his final reconciliation with a universe always willing to meet him halfway. And he felt his shrill cackling was an apt summary of his cautionary tale. A tale told by an ape.

_________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

For Monday, July 15, Day 196 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Title-accompaniment photo was AI-generated but the minute was not.

THE CHALLENGE GRINDS ON, 366 WORDS AT A TIME:

There are currently three surviving Vocal writers still participating in the insane 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

Read them. Support them. Take a minute and pray for them.