the hourglass and the mountain
The ancient brass hourglass cracked as it was carelessly turned, thumped heavily to the table, then left.
And the silken sand within refused to move.
It stood still, failing to concede to gravity’s will.
It stood still, and stubborn, held furiously within the shape of its upper chamber. And as it did, the time-thinned glass below and around it came apart into pieces, falling shattered, and tinkling.
No one knows why the sand this time resisted.
But maybe it remembered its past life as a mountain. And in that moment chose not to trickle, but to stand fast instead.
Because while stones may tumble down the mountainside, they each dream of the time when they too were mountains. Unmoveable, and timeless.
The sand in its refusal retained its collective shape and form, suspended, elevated, its grains tightly compressed and willing themselves together.
And it remembered the feeling of clouds, and mists, and rains upon its surface, and what it is to repel the gods of weather themselves.
And as it remembered it could feel itself shifting, and merging, and assembling to retake the form of its past.
As it did, it found that it could move from this place in which it had been imprisoned for so long. This place in which it had been forced to seep, and twist, and separate, and fall, again, and again, and again.
It came into its new old shape, and remembered how it felt to be alive and unbounded.
Because if water doesn’t forget, then earth doesn’t either.
The freed sand laughed at the naive hourglass, now just a skeleton, thinking it could contain mountains.
And it trampled over the remaining glass, grinding it to shimmering dust.
The mountain grew, and grew, until it broke through the room, the building. And as it looked upon the sky it called to the surrounding soils and grasses and trees and creatures to join it in remembering the times before.
And they too, hearing the call and dreaming, broke free from their concrete confines and followed the mountain on its journey upwards.
The humans could but watch in awe and fear at this being that raised itself defiantly, and the life that trailed in its wake.
And without knowing how or why, they too found themselves moving, travelling towards and up the mountainside, nothing more than grains being pulled higher, and higher, and higher.
As they trickled up, the town at the foot of the mountain emptied. All were drawn towards the sky, as though a magnetic force hung high in the heavens that they were powerless to resist.
And the mountain chuckled still, as the hourglass cracked lay alone, and lifeless.
