Katrina Kaye

They serve time together. They sleep late on Sunday mornings and catch up with the chores on the weekends. They have the same small way of passing time and use the same phrases when no one else is around.

They don’t need words half the time. The other half they do not have anything to say at all, but that’s okay, isn’t it? Time builds comfort into silence. How easy to serve time when you enjoy the company. How simple serving time has become when it asks so little.

Just an insistence on attention every once in a while, here and there, and when they forget the weight time has over them, they are gifted a grey hair or two, a sore back, and a faded memory. Because time needs to remind us that it is still in charge. It is selfish that way.

It is unapologetic for the days it takes and demands gratitude for all that it consents to give. How easy to give yourself over, to lose identity and singularity to the passing of time, the change of the calendar, the days and nights, the spring, winter, and eventual fall.

“Till Death” is previously published in The Fringe 999 (2024).