Saving Minutes

You were in bed. You heard your mother working in the kitchen. It was still light, the birds were bickering, the waterfall behind the house was falling. Its rushing lulled you, you loved the moment you lay in, and you counted the time from this instant to this, and put it away to be lived on another night, your wedding night or some other night that needed all the luck, all the saved-up minutes you could bring it. Later you filled bottles in the stream and dated them and stored them in a cupboard. Months after, you retrieved them to stare at what time had done. You were eight, but already you knew it was working on you, each minute you passed through was gone. You didn’t want to give up your old clothes. You’d watch your mother wrap your dresses in a box for another girl and know that where their stripes and buttons went what you’d lived in them followed. But those minutes in bed, minutes of utter safety, you heard the water falling and didn’t want it to fall. You wanted to keep it, you saved yourself that minute. I don’t know if you still have it or if you’ve had to spend it on you or on me. But I know you still save minutes I used to think went unwatched into our account in time that allows no withdrawals. You hold onto the slippers and letters, things that are leaving, things we’ve left, evidence we’re judged unfairly by. You have the picture, you and Pam in blue fishing in the stream below the pool, staring back at the camera half-abashed. Your jacket is still in the closet. You never wear it, you don’t even remember when you did, but it’s here to testify the picture doesn’t lie —though the color’s different, your hair is shorter now, and the water in the pool is long gone downstream.