When Time Ran Out, I Took the Clock In
- Jul 28, 2023
- 2 min read
by Sarah Carey
Where black-arrowed hands ticked predictably for years, a house’s beating heart,
a still, round space. Its yellow face had faded, like our tourbillon of hope against life’s gravity, within the silenced chimes — no wing, no prayer, a generation, or a few, passing in seconds. We’d long since stopped holding time like a hostage between us,
ransoming the old betrayals — all we counted on to kill that elephant of remembrance to which we finally succumb as silence fills my mother’s living room like a pitcher full of need, empty of tea. In my greed to set things right, I took the clock in. Sorry for bad news, horologists said —
vintage parts are hard to find and labor lags for restoration. Gave a price that blew my mind, then offered up that it was fine to love it dead.
I placed the slate-cased clock up high enough to lift my eyes, like a child to imagined angels.
Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Sugar House Review, Florida Review, Zone 3, Redivider, River Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Atlanta Review and elsewhere. Her book reviews have appeared recently in Salamander, EcoTheo Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and the Los Angeles Review.
Sarah’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Orison Anthology. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Accommodations (2019), winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award and The Heart Contracts (2016, Finishing Line Press.) Her debut full-length collection was a semifinalist for the 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize sponsored by Madville Publishing, and a finalist for the 2023 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com or on Twitter @SayCarey1.
