Fragments of Lost Time

The travellers collected broken clocks because they believed time had abandoned them. One clock held a father’s last breakfast, another the summer before the war, another five minutes nobody remembered living. The rhinoceroses dragged the fragments while musicians played backward, trying to make yesterday return. At a crossroads one wheel broke beneath the weight.

A woman picked up the smallest clock. It had no hands, only a warm ticking against her palm. ‘This one is now,’ she said. Nobody trusted it.

Still, they sat, shared bread and let the music face forward. The lost years did not reassemble. Instead, memory climbed down from the carts and walked beside them—present, imperfect and no longer mistaken for a destination.