short fiction · 2026-10-26

Metaphoric Gears

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The mind does not think in straight lines. It turns in gears — brass and rust, some microscopic, some vast as cathedral wheels. A thought engages another: grief meshes with memory, desire catches on fear, and the whole machine shudders forward. No lubricant but time. No engineer but the turning itself. Some gears have forgotten their teeth, spinning smooth and useless in the dark. Others grind so fine they wear the axle down to nothing. I watch the mechanism from inside it, counting revolutions: one, two, seventeen, a hundred and three. The count is the only rest.