Sitzfleisch of Time

Written by Hannah Xu from Massachusetts, USA

Time has no spine here.

It slumps, exhausted,

spilling itself across bone and branch,

its face drooping under the weight

of remembrance.

These clocks —

they are not keepers of time,

but witnesses to decay,

to the quiet betrayal

of routine and consistency.

A tree grows from stone

but bears no leaves,

only the ghost of cycles

that once made sense.

In the corner,

a face — if it is a face —

sleeps without sleeping,

its features slipping

into a dreamless void.

Are those things the same

when time forgets

how to hold them apart?

Ants crawl over a sealed watch.

Wild. Blind.

Perhaps they search for meaning

in machinery

long since uncoiled.

There is no present here.

Only the stamina of time —

long melted, of moment into moment,

a slow collapse of structure

into surreal silence.

And yet,

even in this stillness,

something endures.

A whisper.

The breath of time,

persisting,

without needing to be remembered.

This piece was inspired by Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory (1931)