The Rust of Clocks

Brass teeth grind against the hour, a slow mastication of seconds slipping through the narrow neck of glass. We wait for the chime that never breaks the air.

Dust settles on the pendulum’s arc, a gray frost blooming on the polished wood. The weight of afternoons stretches thin, pulled taut across the silent room.

Shadows creep like dark water on the walls, swallowing the numbers one by one. In the quiet, the mechanism forgets its purpose, and time becomes a heavy, unmoving stone.