“Mostly, time is on your side”
“I don’t think so”, replies Miss Coffee, “Time is the disease you take to heal all other wounds”.
Both are silent.
They watch as the sun dances its light over the lake, then Miss Coffee throws a stone into the water. It is cold outside, both are wrapped in coats and scarves, frost hangs on individual blades of grass, the trees are almost bare. But the sun is shining, as if her lover asked her to play a teasing game of longing and beauty.
“I thought you liked the impermanence that everything in this world brings,” The Moonman muses aloud, turning to Coffee. He likes looking at her so much. It’s a bit like looking at the sun. So beautiful it hurts.
She brushes a strand behind her ear, then lays her head back and closes her eyes.
“Impermanence, yes,” she murmurs. Should she tell him that she worships impermanence so much precisely because it scares her? He would understand. And yet she withholds that information from him. Another time, perhaps.
Will this timeline in this life lead to a point where she tells him each of her truths? Probably not.
But if one counts up each life and each period in which truth falls – then it would certainly come close.
Is it better to look at time in this way? As a spectrum, boundless and never completed in one lifetime, yet as a whole for little people like Coffee and the Moonman?
“Let’s go back inside,” Coffee suggests as she gets a headache from her thoughts. Or it’s from alcohol, but that doesn’t sound as poetic.
“I like being here with you. It’s less lonely than in there.” Moonman points to the lake house where the funeral service is going on.
“There are a lot of people in there who feel less lonely when you’re there” Coffee stands up and reaches out to him. He has duties and she has to sink into self-pity and nostalgia. This is the right path that time has chosen for them. Whether they devote themselves to it or avoid it, it is the same.
That’s just how time works – as a dictator.
“I thought time was a disease? Now it’s supposed to be a political system?” Moonman smiles challengingly.
“Is there a difference?” asks Coffee with feigned naivetĂ©.
They smile at each other. At that moment, the sun stops, the water freezes, and the smiles freeze on their faces.
At that moment, time is on their side.
© Sophie Haller 2022-08-18