'All Of It Within You' by Sumitra Singam

In the beginning was Time. It was chubby, with little sausage wrists. It peed and pooed and cooed and gurgled and delighted everyone. But after a few months, it changed. It would snap tight around me like an elastic band whenever I settled on the couch with the remote. Or it would float wide, like a spreading oil slick on the ocean’s surface, beautiful with its swirling colours, wild and proud, refusing to be contained in any way. It seemed to choose threshold moments to do this, when all that was needed was teeth to be brushed, shoes to be put on. And in those moments when there was just an expanse of green meadowland in which to play, frolic, explore, be curious; Time would finish any activity within a finger snap. It would turn its face, pointier now, nostrils crusted with drying snot, demanding more by way of entertainment. Then in the time it took to blink, it found itself a little Attitude in its dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and it started to sass everyone. Time found its own occupations, shuffling and mysterious, curfew-avoidant. Then Time left me, and the days swirled in a grey, meaningless haze. Now Time returns with its own chubby bundle, seeking to share its burden with me, and the remote lies neglected once again. Time complains to me of how her own little bundle escapes the laws of physics. And I say to her, you, Time, you are the laws of physics. You are my gravity, my buoyancy, my light and dark, my everything and nothing. You are my Time; you hold all of it within you.