Four Seconds

It’s been two years, thirty-two days, five hours

and fifty-nine seconds since time stopped.

It was 7:00 in the evening, December 18th,

the sun froze half-dipped below the horizon

and the snow continued to fall, never slowing

or building up on the ground, and the thousands

of clocks throughout the city were stuck mid-chime

and had to be broken. There was no sense of when

to sleep, when to work, and the novelty of snow

angels that melted back into place quickly

wore thin, so the mayor placed the names of

every child who lived there in his hat and

pulled out twelve slips of paper, leading them

up the highest hill and shepherding them into

a ring, their backs turned to each other, and as

he shredded their names into scraps, he assigned

each of them a number, he told

them that they’d be the wardens of time, and

in return, they could choose where to start.

Two was practical, suggesting starting where they stopped.

Six was stubborn, insisting on starting at midnight.

But Eight, staring at her pink snowboots, said

that she could guess the time by the pitch of the

clockwork evening train whistles.

So schools opened again, businesses rumbled to life

like willful machines, and no one thought to

use that hill anymore. But the children found

their own way to speak, though their voices

were useless for anything but counting and chiming,

they scribbled notes and passed them along the circle.

And Twelve, constantly looking for ways to amuse

himself, slipped a note to Eleven one day, nodding

at her to pass it down, and it read, “listen, last night

four seconds before Four I saw time start again,

and we were off the hill – we’d been off for a long time –

riding the evening train to the beach to spend the day

because spring was almost over and the air was humid,

and on the way back we stopped at the marketplace,

nothing special, just buying groceries, but that’s

not the point,” and they knew he was lying

like he always did. But that night, everyone

down in the city sat up in their beds, swearing

they heard the clocks starting up again, chiming

and clanging for only a few seconds though

they’d never been fixed, and

complaints rolled into the mayor’s office the

following morning, and lectures were given

to each child, scolding them, telling them

to stop playing tricks and take their job

seriously, but they were too busy

exchanging wide eyes and hesitant smiles,

nodding as if to confirm that

they’d seen the summer come, too.