Word Count: 442
Here’s the thing, life has two settings: “slow” and “there’s just no way I can keep up.” I live somewhere in between. I’m either standing out in the cold rainy night, waiting for something to happen or running up to find the doors closed and locked up, party balloons at half mast with their strings and ribbons dragging along on the floor.
It’s a general glitch of some sort in my timing mechanism. I even tried to enter the world a month early but the nurses pushed me back in, medicated my mother and sent her home to wait it out. Never thinking she might have heard one say, “Did you feel that? The baby has a hole in its head.” I didn’t, just the usual soft spot but my mother still wonders, I think.
It may be due to Daylight Savings Time or it could be short bursts of a power surge or electrical failure. I’m out of sync with the normal flow of the universe. It’s okay, I can adjust; I know where the dial is in the back to reset my internal clock but within a short span, I’m off again.
I wasn’t there when you stopped by to tell me you were leaving. I slept through your phone calls later that night. In the morning, I found your text message. You were, I figured, somewhere mid-Pacific ocean by that time. I got your letter a week later. It was postmarked “Wales” and I thought that was neat. It said you needed to take the time now, while you were young, to explore the world. You didn’t want to be tied down in a relationship. You’d always love me. Well, thank you; that made me smile.
I pinned the postcard you sent of the Welsh countryside up by my desk. I took it down three months later when you sent a brief note saying you got married. I wonder if the little stone church was in this sort of countryside setting. If she wore a white apron and baked bread for the wedding. I imagined a wildflower bouquet and the whole village dancing. Maybe carrying you both on chairs they held up to the sun.
Sure, I cried. Not for your happiness, I’m ashamed to say but for my own screwed up sense of timing. I mean, it just took you three months to get mentally prepared for life ever after?
I’ve got a new phone and the ringer is set at its highest. I check my text messages four times an hour. Next time, if I’m lucky, I’ll be at the right place at the right time.
