Minutes and Memories

How many more minutes?

No one can tell—the clocks have stilled and the sun is dark. Can you feel the time moving steadily through your bones?

On the wall, oil spreads out from marriage pictures framed in chipped gold. Her dress is grey with age. His hair is pale and thin. Their eyes are empty and tired.

But deep inside, something is remembering golden smiles of summer sky and fields. A snowflake heart. Hair vivid as autumn leaves. A butterfly is her child, on a champagne stream bubbling into the wedding goblet. Chasing sleek cars with foggy windows, clattering shoes run pell-mell over the tough asphalt, away from clamoring relatives. Lips once cherried are now dry, streaked with dead laugh lines. The rice is still wondering where to fall, and when. Sweet, sweet champagne butterflies flicker across the moonlit sheet music, unlike any instrument sounded by amorous strings or reeds.

It’s driving them mad. They cannot dance as long as the frame still leaks onto the dull wallpaper, and so their smiles are empty. The lace is threadbare.

Where did the flowers go?

No one can tell—the clocks have stilled and the sun is dark.