The Goodbye List #1

J's morning sickness - image by J, click on it to view large in flickr

The first to go missing was 10 o'clock. Out went the morning cartoons, but no one noticed. The children were kept very busy at school. For them, too, bedtime arrived earlier, but that was also no surpirse. The homework had put them all to sleep.

Next to disappear was 1 o'clock. That slim hour, singular and tall - all the more easy it was to tip it over with a plastic fork and slip it away in a styrofoam luncn box. And when the teeth were being cleaned, the shirt was being buttoned, the headlines were being scanned and yesterday's dishes was still sitting in the sink, like a magician's long-suffering rabbit, 8 o'clock vanished as soon as the audience blinked.

Where had all that time gone?
Will they ever come back?
Who took them away?
And why was this so?

These were qestions I never asked until one day I realised something was defnitely amiss. It began when I felt the feverish whoosh of subway air as the train chased its station with determined pace. I next breathed the fretful dismay in the morning breath of passengers when the train, having changed its mind, stalled in a nameless place. Later I heard all the marching feet stumble, even if only for a second, as they brought themselves to work. Still later, those same feet paused for a slender moment during their exit, as if uncertain that they were finally allowed to leave. Curious, I saw the sign on the post office next door dance open, then closed, and open, before it decided closed. Though like any other day such confusion would probably pass, I knew from then on that my 9 and 5 o'clocks were forever lost.

list to be continued...