The Cosmic Clock

I look above at the starry sky and one of the stars twinkles so regularly that I could almost mistake it for a plane. It keeps the rhythm of the universe.

My heart beats in time to it, my feet tap against the ground at regular intervals. I am the milisecond hand of a slow world, and I will be dead within its minute.

Tap, tap, tap, I have fifty thousand paces left, and then I will be gone, the minute will have passed and it takes sixty times my lifespan before an hour passes for the Great Bear in the sky or for the Scorpion or for Orion.

My heart beats very fast, many beats left, it hurts how fast it’s beating, and so I breathe in time with Orion’s twinkling belt to slow it down, and it does so obediently.

Trees watch me pass with a speed they cannot fathom. Why is that small thing running so fast, they wonder. We are walking at a reasonable pace.

I take a step and a spider scuttles by. Why is that small thing running so fast, I wonder. I am walking at a reasonable pace.

The stars above watch the trees, they watch the movements of their leaves and their roots and they wonder why the trees are running so fast, after all, they think, we are moving at a reasonable pace.

I am a milisecond hand on the cosmic clock, thinks the moon, who considers herself to be short-lived.

I lie down on the floor for a minute, letting my head spin in time with the moon’s orbit. It seems to me that it is staying very still.

The sun watches the Earth from afar and wonders why it spins so fast.

I fall asleep in my bed and wake up in time with the Earth’s rotation.