The Nine Gates.

There are nine gates.

They don’t look like doors. They don’t open with a sound. But they are there, every day, pulling at the edges of the hour.

---

At midnight, something slips. The world exhales. The clocks keep moving, but for a moment, time does not. This is the first gate. A window cracked open over nothing and everything. Most people are asleep, and those awake are elsewhere, even if they don’t know it.

---

Then 3 a.m. comes quietly. The second gate. A stillness thick enough to lean against. No one belongs here. Even the machines hesitate. The silence is not empty—it’s alert. This is where dreams grow teeth, or where people realize they are more awake than they wanted to be.

---

At 6 a.m., light begins to argue with darkness. This gate doesn’t swing open—it thins. The air feels uncommitted. Not morning, not night. This is the hour when birds speak and most people forget how to listen.

---

9 a.m. returns the body. This is the gate of clocks, of coffee, of motion. But even here, there’s a flicker—a chance to notice the gap between who you were before you started your day and who you are now, moving through it.

---

Noon arrives like a bell. The fifth gate. The sun at its highest, time at its widest. A straight line running through the middle of the sky. Everything is visible. If you pause, you can almost feel the weight of the day resting on its spine.

---

3 p.m. is a quiet unraveling. The sixth gate doesn’t announce itself. But it tugs. A softness in focus. An awareness of repetition. This is where the day begins to echo itself, asking if you're still paying attention.

---

6 p.m. is the seventh gate. A change in temperature. A signal in the color of light. The world begins to loosen its grip. Meals are prepared. Streets fill and then empty. This is the hour where the body starts remembering its own name.

---

9 p.m. brings the eighth gate. Everything slows. Conversation tilts inward. Screens flicker, rooms dim. This is the hour where silence becomes personal, where people tell the truth more easily, or not at all.

---

And then, again, midnight. The ninth gate, or the first. A closing and a beginning. A soft edge folded into itself. And once more, we are taken out of time, just long enough to forget we were ever in it.

---

But most people never see the gates. They pass through them in traffic, on calls, brushing their teeth, scrolling, waiting for the next thing. The gates do not need you to notice them. But they are there, steady and strange, offering small exits from the machinery of hours.

---

We enter, we leave. We forget, we return. Time continues. But every now and then, something in us looks up.