Ten Seconds
- Dec 6, 2024
- 4 min read
by Sarah Lynn Hurd
Ten seconds is a lot longer than you think. Your whole life can change in ten seconds, or nine for that matter. If you’re anything like me, you might easily lose yourself on a brisk autumn walk, especially if you know the route without thinking about it. I like to walk to the beat of a song, and I like to walk fast. I’m talking 150 BPM. I’m talking elevated heart rate. I’m talking let’s break a sweat, little lady!
Nine seconds, like I said, is still long enough to change your life. When you walk fast like me, you’d better know how to catch your fall when you trip — stepping off the edge of a curb with a lopsided gait might be bad news. My left foot’s bigger than the right, see. My whole left side’s a little off: bigger foot, saggier tit, lower ear. I have this joke that I slept on my left side in the womb.
Eight seconds can be deceiving — the perfect amount of time to tie a shoelace, even if your hands are cold, fingers moving in slow motion because you were in such a hurry that morning and didn’t grab gloves on your way out. You might be in such a hurry that you realized your lace was undone three blocks ago but brushed the thought aside like someone else’s cigarette smoke. Maybe you stopped smoking the day you learned you were pregnant.
Seven seconds is sticky, like a mouthful of peanut butter straight from the spoon instead of breakfast. In just seven seconds of standing before the pantry, you can convince yourself that the spoonful is better than nothing — that the thing growing inside you deserves a chance even if you don’t believe you do. I hate how it sticks to the roof of my mouth, but I love to shut up, smile at the neighbors, and point to my lips apologetically.
Six seconds is how long it takes an emotion to absorb into the body. If you walk as fast as I do, early in the morning before the sun crests the trees, you might be able to pretend you can’t feel your throat constrict as you pass your reflection in that black storefront window. I’m growing every day. Maybe if I walk faster, I can slow things down. I can pump up my playlist to 160 BPM. I can run.
Five seconds makes me want to vomit. Do you know how many peanut M&Ms you can swallow in five seconds? How many glugs of milk? I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to be smaller — crying and starving and stuffing myself with babka I dug out of the trash in the middle of the night, only to puke it back up thirty minutes later so I could finally go to bed, pillowy skin around my eyes swollen with exertion.
Four seconds is how quickly you can go from giggly to teary-eyed when you’re trying to live off raw vegetables and cups of warm broth. When you break, and the little thing inside you demands a croissant from the café on the corner, you might realize she’s a feisty one. Stubborn like her mother, she’s going to have her way. I don’t remember the last time I bought real butter, but if you’re anything like me, you’re gonna love it.
Three seconds is classic — who doesn’t love the rule of three? It’s the smallest number that can create a pattern, and what’s more satisfying than repetition — knowing exactly what’s next? One beat after another. Nothing scary about that. Nothing scary about your alarm ringing every morning, reminding you to take your birth control, or the black coffee you start each day with, or the knowledge that you’re only responsible for yourself, so what’s a little neglect? Then she comes along.
Two seconds can still change your life, you know. When you step off the curb, beelining for that café, and you never did take the eight seconds to tie your shoe, and one foot is a bit bigger than the other, and you’re exhausted from morning sickness, and you haven’t eaten a proper meal all week — you’ll probably realize you’re falling right away. You might even see a flash of silver speeding your way, let go, and think, oh well.
One second is everything — one second for the condom to break, for you to process that little plus sign on a plastic stick, to decide you’ll do it alone, to regret it, to trip into moving traffic, to do nothing about it. One second is also how quickly a stranger will yank you back onto the sidewalk, pulling your arm so hard it almost pops out of the socket. What the fuck, lady, he might say. Look where you’re walkin!
Sarah Lynn Hurd is a writer and poet living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in New Flash Fiction Review, Fractured Lit, Thimble, Flash Frog, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. Her work often explores grief, nostalgia, womanhood, and self-perception. She has a BA in creative writing and English literature from Grand Valley State University.
