The Time Habitat

Father always used to say:
“One day, the books recorded that the world found peace at this very hour.”
His voice was full of certainty,
as though he had written history with his own hands.

But when the girl looked around, she understood
that peace was only a sentence written on a page,
not an experience life could touch.

At that moment, she looked at her colorful box—
old, marked by memories,
a box that for years had been nothing more than an object.
She picked it up,
drew out its colors like fragments of dreams,
and, with determination,
tied its strings to a balloon.

The balloon grew.
Not with air—
but with everything she believed.

The girl held on to it,
not to fly,
but to hold time.

She rose,
crossing the edge of the world
to a place where clocks swam like fish
and days moved like rhinoceroses—
heavy, yet gentle.

There, the child within her was waiting:
ageless, timeless,
free from history.

The girl sat beside her.
Neither on the ground nor in the past,
but somewhere between sky and water,
where the future had no meaning
and “now” was enough in which to live.

The balloon drifted slowly.
Birds accompanied it,
fish glided beneath her feet,
and rhinoceroses carried the world upon their shoulders.

Then the girl understood:
peace in the world cannot merely be written;
it must be built by you.
Not in history—
but within yourself.

In that moment, she paused in time,
not to remain there,
but to taste life
without haste,
without obligation.

Simply in joy.
Simply within herself.
Simply with the child inside her.