The Clocktower of Tempus City

We live in an elevated city. A spire that reaches above the lives of the citizens occupying Tempus City. We have been covered up with a frame, one that is a representation of the passing of time. With metal shaped and curved and pounded into our surface. Our home is cemented into the framework of your lives. Every move we make is for you, yet you do not see us. You only think of us as evil, a pursuer constantly trying to catch up to you. We spend our days breathing in the coppery tang of machinery. Our breaths puffing in and out in a steady if not stilted rhythm. Winding up and down, through and around in a routined dance, cogs rotating around each other. The inner workings of a clock. We sold our souls to be of use. To be praised. But then we got stuck and now we are trapped. Ringing out our pleas for escape at top of every hour. But you don’t hear us. You despise us. We are so far removed from you, going about your days below us that we, in our irony, have lost track of time. I could not tell you the day, year or even century we are living in. All I know is that because of me and mine you woke up before work this morning. You stumbled down the stairs and grabbed a banana as you rushed out the door. Because of my cousins the hues of dawn and sunset, pinks and oranges, purple, and whiskey you did not trip down your front steps in darkness. Because of my sacrifice you caught the morning train. You met your deadline and received a grant because of the restrictions I have placed on you. Because of my colleagues the lengthening and shortening of shadows you noticed the day catching up to you and met your little brother on time for dinner. The time you spent with him inspired him to knock on his ex- wife’s door and seek his daughter. The one he has not seen since she was born. Through us you think about them, your fellow people and sacrifice your time for them. But, what about us? Who thinks of our sacrifice as the blessing it is. Who extends a smile to their ticking clock or the darkness creeping in through their blinds bidding for your rest. Inside the realm of time we have forgotten how to use our voices. How to string words together into coherence. You may be aware of the expanse of your life and the timely impact of your life’s movements. But we are not. Though the knowledge of your contributions allows me to breathe, to accept and even praise my fate. To push forward through my endless free fall of work and rotation. I forget my dreams to remind you to pursue yours. But sometimes a sense of wrongness creeps into the power of my movements. Making me work sluggishly and without purpose. Is this because you do not recognize me? Or because I can feel the tired sorrow in my people as the hues of the sun fade into gray incrementally as time moves forward. As the changing shadows grow darker; more foreboding than comforting. Would I spin with renewed vigor in the presence of your realization. If one day on your morning walk you looked up, noticing our presence. If your son and his friends stood on a dock at the edge of the lake and screamed to my cousins “Thank you for your beauty, your eternal work and progression!” Or what if you praised the shadows that hid you one fateful night. Allowing you the time to scrounge up coins to pay off your relentless debtors. What if each day you walked with purpose and never wallowed in fear of your time catching up to you. What if instead you said thank you with every action you took. What if you in respect of time itself became your own time. Allowing us a break just one breath to be breathed in for our own selves not in a tired fury to catch your attention. In that broken space in time we would sing praises to the flow of sound throughout the air. To the decibels, hertz, and phon’s as they ripple through the boughs of a willow tree and the silent song the two create in that moment of collision. My consciousness would float into the air until I could tell no difference between air and cloud. I would pat the individual molecules making up the clouds on the back. In appreciation for the work they put into being a part of something that is essential to life. I would cry up at the moon for its aid in the progression of time. And I would lay floating above the waves on the surface of the ocean feeling the connection it has made to the moon. How the movement of waves does not live without the gravitational pull of the glowing piece that permanently resides in the sky. And then I would return to my work. Knowing that time will continue to move forward at an unrecognizable pace. But with the knowledge that my fellows know their work is not for naught. That they are seen and understood. That my breaths are not just for the people below me but for them too. That we will all bind together hand in hand to aid you in your journey through time whilst we are trapped within it. With only the knowledge that you may not see us. But you could not exist without us. That I can move forward knowing that the work I do has a purpose and that purpose is worth something worthwhile. Whether it is a tentative smile or a tear brought forth by infinite cry’s of laughter. I have realized in my brief interlude outside of time that this is my purpose, the reason I have let go of my time. So you can make the most of yours.