I move to clip up the lock of hair that normally escapes when I tie my curls into a bun. I am left grasping at empty air. The hair has grown and is now caught by the hair tie. I set the bobby pin down on the desk before me.
This is how time passes. (Subtly, while you are not watching.)
On the first day of my internship this summer, they took my photo for my key card. I looked down at the picture and hardly recognized myself. My face, settling into adulthood, with all these features I never noticed!
This is how time passes.
At 21, time is chopped into neat segments. University, internship, university, internship, and so on. Things are constantly starting and ending.
And at the end, I always find myself back in my father’s car. Back in my childhood bedroom, where my bookshelf towers over me like a record of my life. Here, I will briefly recover until I am ready to launch myself, inevitably, back into the beginnings and ends of things, back into the world.
Image credit: “City Morning” by Rimantas Virbickas.
