When the Clock Forgot Its Hands

The clock forgot its hands the day the world grew quiet.

No tick. No pull. Only the soft inhale of stillness.

The air hung like glass — thin, breakable, perfect.

The shadows didn’t stretch anymore, they simply stayed.

A bird paused mid-flight, wings caught between before and after.

I stood there,

not ahead, not behind —

inside a moment that had no edges.

Without the hands, the clock was no longer a keeper.

It became a mirror, reflecting everything

I had rushed past without noticing.

I saw the child I was,

the stranger I would become,

and the thin thread that tied them together.

They were both looking at me,

as if this was the only place we had ever truly met.

It wasn’t peace, not exactly.

It was something quieter —

like the silence just before a storm decides

whether to fall or to forgive.

When the clock forgot its hands,

time became a room without doors.

And for once, I did not try to escape.

I simply breathed.

And the world —

for the briefest heartbeat —

breathed with me.