The Thief

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

She doesn’t know whether to think of the sound as an explosive awaiting the perfect moment to detonate, or to think of it as exactly what it is. The ever-familiar sound of the clock marking the passage of time. She finds herself lately thinking of it mostly in the former, feeling in her brain an acute pressure filling its bounds until it feels just about ready to bust.

Now, another awareness, just as sharp as her brain pressure, just as sharp as a fresh, fine-pointed knife. She takes in the space she’s in, the four walls, the popcorn ceiling, windows before her, the view outside them. She’s awakened to a different day, but the view remains. The same landscape sits before her eyes in the same lighting, in the same room, in the same house, on the same street, in the same town. Every day, it’s more of the same.

She feels her head tighten again, the bomb inside her building pressure once more as the thief makes itself known to her.

There he is. His first appearance of the dawning day. The thief. The taker of all she had planned. The snatcher of all her hopes, dreams, goals. Her brain depicts them all slipping through the palms of her hands in the worst of nightmares, in the most ghoulish of horror films. She watches them one by one fall away into the heaping knapsack the thief carries, filled with all the plans and dreams of everyone else he’s robbed.

“This is the fun part,” she hears friends saying in her head as she watches the thief load up his sack. “This is the prime of your life,” her family’s words ring through her brain as the thief swipes whatever’s left from her stash. 

The pressure in her mind builds, and she can feel it expanding down her throat, down into her chest. It builds there, too, as if the caverns of her lungs aren’t enough to hold it all, all the anger and resentment and sadness and resignation she feels toward what the thief has stolen and continues to steal. 

She closes her eyes to let the feeling have its way with her, to let it consume her finally and allow herself to release it all. She waits for the grenade of her heart to finally explode. Her tears are locked and loaded, and her heart is pumping fast. She feels it just as much as she hears it in her own ears. She waits.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The clock. That damn clock. The hands of time push her back into reality, back into that room, on that street, in that town.  She feels her explosivity diffusing as the clock reminds her.

Always, the reminder. It comes in like a bomb squad and extinguishes everything that was about to burst.

The clock. The ticking. 

It reminds her of the way her heart still beats and goes on beating, despite its heaviness.

It reminds her that she is still alive.

It reminds her that, although the thief may have stolen almost everything that has made up her depths, it has left one thing behind for now.

Time. 

It’s is all she has left. And she knows she can’t waste it.