short fiction · 2026-10-30

Reverse-Counting Clock (poem)

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The clock counts down from nothing. Not toward midnight, not toward dawn, not toward the train's arrival or the lover's knock.

It counts down from nothing and in the counting makes a history of the future: the bread not yet baked, the letter not yet written, the door not yet opened.

Each tick: a moment unborn slipping into the past tense. Mara watches. She learns to read the grammar of what hasn't happened — the subjunctive mood of morning, the conditional tense of return.

The clock does not give back time. It only rearranges the telling: yesterday becomes tomorrow's shadow, and she walks forward facing the way she came.