reading room
Between Hours
Time has never been a strict thing, not really. In Iceland, the sun forgets its bedtime — morning hangs around, and night takes ages deciding whether to turn up. Hours stretch strangely, reaching toward winter fireworks, daylight stitched with small crackles, the horizon unsure what it is meant to be.
Here at home, curtains closed, the clock keeps its habits but I don't always join in. Pages gather, melodies surface before I have names for them, one idea knocking into the next, thoughts coming loose, seconds coming loose, a quiet countdown dissolving into air.
Time blurs when I stop measuring it, when the world outside is allowed to be whatever it is, and I let myself stay where I am, in the hush between heartbeats, where light on the wall and thought in the body briefly feel like the same thing.
There's a kind of beauty in forgetting the rules we made up and then obeyed: that morning must be bright, that evening must be dark, that minutes must march instead of wander — instead of slip, instead of lose count for once.
Maybe the most honest moments are the ones that don't fit inside a calendar square, the ones where a day opens out, and I drift, beyond the ticking, not improved, not explained, just there in the gap between any beginning and any ending, the air still bending light, as if time was never asking to be understood, only entered between hours.
— Lilith