Marla woke up bright eyed and with a smile that she could feel before she was fully awake. “I am 45 years old today!” She looks in the mirror and wonders when her crows feet will begin to extend into her hairline. She’s been dreaming of the day she will be full of wrinkles and have grey hair. Her first thought that morning: “What a blessing it is to be old.”

To be young meant you were gullible and unintelligent. You know nothing. With time, the aging your mind and body goes through is extraordinary. Everyone wants to be old. Everyone wants to be wise. To know the world is to know yourself. And to know yourself is to know the world.

The older one gets, the larger the parties. Birthday parties are not really a thing when you’re a child. Rarely do they remember them so parties are focused on older adults. Marla remembers that she and her friends didn’t have a party until they were 18! That is when you start to feel older and unlike a child. At least for Marla it did.

Aging is the most precious thing we have. We look forward to the future, knowing there is the unknown. The endless possibilities. The past is the past, it is important for how we became who we are today, but rarely do people want to be a child again. It’s so beautiful isn’t it? Being able to get older. Witnessing the changes in your body, it fills our cups.

There is shame put upon those who are younger in a way. Those children wish to have the knowledge of adults, some of them are going to lengths of making themselves look like an adult. Altering their bodies to that of an older individual, but that’s mostly the boys. The boys will have procedures to get bigger muscles and a receding hairline. Makes them look like an adult but really, they’re still a kid. They’ll get here one day, but there’s no rush. All in ones time.

In the middle me ages time was determined by candles with nails in them. As they slept the candles would melt the nails would slip and make a huge tang of a noise in the metallic plate. The chime would vibrate echo the room counting to exactly 7 chimes 7 hours of sleep and then awake

We have always been told that we ought to live one day at a time. Enjoy the precious time we have, stop and smell all the flowers and take in the beautiful scenery of our planet. Buthow am I supposed to take one day at a time, when time is so elusive? In my culture, it is customary for a young girl like me to partake in what is known as The Wave. This happens the very moment we turn 18. Suddenly time stops, and before anyone can react, we grow up. Before our eyes our friends from childhood develop breasts, unwanted hair suddenly sprouts like weed everywhere and a foul odor occurs even at the slightest movements. From that moment on, we are doomed. I look in the mirror and what I see makes my skin crawl. It happened so fast that I almost got motion sickness. I didn’t want to grow up, but there’s nothing to do about it. Magic, they say. I snort at the lie. When I was little, not so long ago, I did believe them. I didn’t question them for one second. Now… I cursed the freaking lie.

Time Refine Sublime Define

Day Say Sway Way

Night Bright Sight Delight

We follow the moon. We plan harvest around the harvest moon. The brighter the moon, the better the harvest. We don’t celebrate normal holidays. Instead we celebrate solstices and eclipses, which are signs of good luck and fortune. We plan our month, which is the cycle of the moon, around the moon phases. For example, the take the day of rest on the new moon. We have 360 days in our calendar because the moon cycle last 30 days. And the sun? It is nothing more than a floating star that blocks our beloved moon.

And lo, the bell did toll—over and over. Sometimes at the zenith of the sun, and other times, at the full moon. Sometimes on the dot of each hour, and other times, way off schedule.

And it didn’t matter when the bell rang. They gathered up their things as in a wild frenzy of terror, fearing the next ring, and ran for shelter anywhere the light of the sun was blocked, because when the bell rang, the sun’s rays heated degree by degree until fire broke out in the wilds by day, and even night. At the next bell, the clouds rolled to soothe the lands with calming rains.

Their time was measured by the ringing of the bell, and they talked of a glorious final toll. A time when the bell ceased to ever ring, though many often said it to be a fairy tale. To those who believed the bell would never end, they feared each ring of the bell as though it would be their last.

Our hours are only two score long and so are our minutes. Each day is counted by when the sun sets and rises. A new day is when the sun rises, and vice versa. Our calendar has four hundred days it instead of 365 days. Four is a very lucky number.

Zigzagging cars and one spandex-clad bicyclist with an apparent death wish, West Chester Pike was a snaking traffic jam. Frowning at his wife in the passenger seat, Jeff angrily drummed the steering wheel. Tammy applied eyeliner and pretended not to notice. His knee bounced as he prayed for a break from the traffic. The light above turned green but because of cars blocking the intersection no one in their lane could move. Repeatedly, Jeff honked. He slapped the wheel. Tammy waved her mascara wand in his general direction.

“Could you chill? Seriously. I told you we are not going to be late. You are a guest speaker at a Black event. You’ve been married to a black woman long enough to understand CP time by now,” Tammy said with a swish on her upper lashes.

Jeff snorted. “Well excuse me for wanting to make a good impression with puncutality. Besides I thought my cousins were CP time.”

Jeff did air quotes. Fluttering her lashes in her compact, Tammy ignored him. The traffic light went from amber to red. Jeff was jealous of the bicyclist weaving through traffic.

“No your cousins are Country People time that’s when half the family is five minutes late and the other half misses the party entirely because they went to the wrong address,” Tammy said chuckling.

“My cousin Possum did that one time and you’ve never let me forget it. One time,” Jeff said.

“The key phrase in that sentence is ‘Cousin Possum.’ Don’t worry baby. You don’t want to show up so early you make all the late people embarrassed. Remember that time at Marisol’s barbecue.”

Tammy’s mouth formed a ripe O as she applied lip liner. The light changed to green. Elated, Jeff crept up the road following a long line of commuters.

“My god, the party was for two o’clock. Two o’clock. We had to set up the outdoor furniture. Buy ice. Pick up cupcakes from somebody’s granny,” Jeff said laughing. “Pick up somebody else’s granny. They hadn’t even lit the grill.”

“Grill! Sweetie, the potatoes were still boiling for the potato salad. That’s City People time. Six hours later taters.”

The overhead light turned red. It was Jeff’s turn to block the intersection. A volley of car horns sounded as frustrated drivers tried to cross the pike. Puckering, Tammy applied the finishing touches to her lips.

“You’re worth waiting for, babe,” she said laying a reassuring palm on his thigh. “Your speech will be golden."

He mussed her lipstick with a kiss as the light turned green.

63,779 crosses Rounded to 64

Squared to 8 A line through every section

A depth to each dimension A graph divided

A birthmark constellation A complex consummation

A section for vacation Working in relation

With the rectangle A corner pouring rain

Is the same corner Soaked in shame

Burnt in flame To turn the page

Is more the same More different

The infinite, obtuse Acute, geometric

Static, dust attic Matted carpet

Time as a unit Carpenters dirt-knit fingernails

The red string crochet Counting freckles on its face

Square the essence of time And kiss the lips of each passing day

For every square becomes a corridor Where the sun and moon lay

In the land of Horologgia, the people had a peculiar relationship with time. Unlike the rest of the world, they didn’t measure time in minutes, hours, or days. Instead, they divided their lives into Task Units—small increments based entirely on how long it took to complete various mundane activities.

For instance, there was the “Boil Unit,” which measured time based on how long it took a kettle of water to boil. Naturally, this was a contentious issue, as some citizens swore by high-altitude boils, while others preferred the slow-burn method. “The Boil Unit is clearly longer in the mountains!” cried one faction. “Only a fool would boil on a flatland stove!” rebutted another. As a result, national debates raged over legislation to standardize the Boil Unit, with endless parliamentary sessions grinding to a halt because no one could agree on the official kettle.

Another popular measurement was the “Coffee Sip Interval,” a unit defined by how long it took the average Horologgian to drink their morning coffee. Of course, not everyone drank coffee. Tea drinkers, juice enthusiasts, and even the rogue water drinkers—known as the “Clear Beverages Coalition”—all demanded their own version of the unit.

One day, the great Council of Tasks met to discuss an even more pressing issue: the “Laundry Cycle Dilemma.” Half the population believed time should be measured by the standard wash cycle, while others advocated for the spin cycle. The elderly Horologgians, however, still clung to the “Line Dry Epoch,” insisting it was the true measure of time’s passing.

This division came to a head when someone, in a moment of innovation, suggested introducing a “Bathroom Break Segment.” It was supposed to be a universally agreed-upon measure, since everyone used the bathroom. But soon, arguments arose over the variations in bathroom habits. “What about quick relievers versus those who take their time with a newspaper?” asked a skeptical scholar. Some insisted it should include handwashing time, while others fought for the inclusion of mirror-checking.

As arguments intensified, Horologgia’s leaders found themselves in a temporal mess. Work stopped because no one could agree on what a “Task Unit” was anymore. If a meeting was scheduled for “one Boil Unit,” some arrived after five minutes, others after twenty, and some never showed up at all, waiting for their laundry to finish.

Eventually, Horologgians reached a solution: instead of changing their units, they simply stopped caring about time altogether. People went to work when they felt like it, meals were eaten whenever someone was hungry, and the concept of being late dissolved entirely. Life became an endless series of tasks, accomplished in their own, very personal measure of time.

Surprisingly, the new system worked. And as one old man was overheard saying, “You can never be late if you don’t agree what time is in the first place.”