Time and the Heartbroken Girl
“Someone please freeze time so I can turn everyone’s pockets inside out/ And remember/ You didn’t see shit.” — George Watsky
And when he saw the earth, not for what it was but for the way a second stretched around it, he knew he could no longer stay. Through her eyes he gazed upon her world then: upon how her slight hands shook in the chill, frozen fingers clutching at the cold black glaze of her iPhone; how her breath had been punched out her lungs even as she stood alone; how the fog that obscured her view of the sea and dampened her hair mirrored the haze flooding her mind. The rush of the sea up the crumbling cliffside would forever swim to their ears, as the muted scent of the pastel golden and rock samphire that hung from the precipice etched themselves into their memories. Thick, icy fingers twisted her insides as the wind scratched her cheeks; the loss flooding her body stirred him, in his observation, to realise — again — he could not stay in his impartial gaze for eternity.
It was not only for her that the observer felt, his wandering eye roamed the world in that second — billions would lay in sleep, transported to a land somewhere between peaceful and fitful; he saw as many shimmering specks of dust as there were stars in the cosmos; the constant dripping of the rainforests as all primates climbed to and from their homes; heard a world that sang in polyphony, that drummed and yelled and riffed; counted the sparks of signal that lit the cities in orange and purple hues.
He saw the earth in its infinite chaos, and spoke to the girl on the cliff. “I must go,” he said, kindly. And though her despairing fingertips reached towards him, his figure became flecked with nothingness until he was gone. It was with the salt of tears that dropped onto the tissue of her skin that she remembered that second; and, it seemed, she would remember the world’s pause like that forever.
Time passed now he was gone. It passed languidly, morosely for her — the earth became small enough to walk around, though she never had the strength to. The insidious beep of her alarm woke her on the dot every 86,400 seconds, yet the blur of the days seemed endless as she found no solace in warming mugs of tea that got her through the day or the songs they’d used to play together. She could spend the best part of an hour trying to shower out her sadness, yet each single drop that hit her body would remind her of her, or the clifftop call that ended all memory of what it meant to smile.
And even so, he watched her world unfold separately from his beautiful planet. She frequented the clifftop where her broken heart resided until she knew the jagged rocks that cracked her fragmented smiles well. Emptily, she would stare into the swells of the sea, into that pallid horizon that endlessly fogged her mind — and he would stare back sadly as his world spun on without her, just as her world spun without the girl who’d made her heart blaze stronger than Saharan sun or Hawaiian magma residing an entire earth away. He knew that time would always flow forward, disregarding her consideration of the waves’ ebb and flow. She looked down on them until it hurt her eyes, and yelled.
“You just stay! Always, you never go anywhere; you just go and come back, just inch along to watch it all wash away again. How do you do it? God, that what I’ve been doing all my life and… and I think I’m going crazy. I’m talking to the bloody ocean, I might as well be mental. I might be…”
Her impassioned voice suddenly trailed off into nothingness.
“I used to love this place,” she mourned. “You ruined it! Just like you ruined us. And I know it was my fault too, I know, I just… I miss you so much.” She crumpled to her knees next to a samphire bed, and felt a billion neurons rush too many thoughts to her head. “I’m so scared of waking up and not loving you. I know it’s over and I know I’m stupid. It’s never going to be the same and I don’t know what to do.”
He watched the vaguely yellowing sky absorb her words, viewed the tableau of the girl and the shore — until he too could no longer bear this world’s stillness. “But why would you want it to be the same?” he spoke. “Pause your world. Look around mine. And tell me where you’ve been.”
Again, her gaze met with the magnetic sea that dared her not to turn around. Every ripple and bump of the elements enthralled her. It was maddeningly beautiful — the way each wave bubbled with original foam, the vivid seaweed that piled up on the rocks in thick strands of life, the vast array of pebbles in hazy oranges to earthy browns. She could stare for years, return every day and look out at something that would never change.
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“I know.”
And slowly, bravely, she turned into the newness — felt the weight of all those who slept and sang hit her like the world’s mass of speeding vehicles; a billion lights flicking on and off, conveying speech and algorithms and the warmth of a bright glow; infinite animals crafting original, extraordinary lives on a ceaselessly spinning world that changed every single second. She saw all that she had been missing: found infinite beauty in the seven billion hearts of all those capable of love and humanity, imagined all the joy and sorrow that all souls contained, discovered the ephemeral nature of everything. And she too saw the world — not for what it was, but for the way a second stretched around it.
He smiled as a samphire stalk swayed from the edge.
