Time
Do you think time can disappear without a trace, with no explanation? You’d think it’d be spun on wheels, but I think it has a mind and dance of its own. I approached my seat on the small plane, it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t supposed to be here, not yet. I sat down next to a man with every hair and seam in place. He had a flashy watch, too. As the plane took off, I clung to the view of the old country, determined to watch until she disappeared, swallowed by sky, or sheer grief. It’s strange, leaving a home that’s not your own. Maybe the minutes escaped through my feet, that’s where I feel it first, cold, numb. Maybe it’s through my stomach, sinking like a black hole. It started ticking again when I picked my head up from between my knees. I looked up from my hands. Glancing out the window, I asked the man why we were landing already, we had just taken off. “We’re in Frankfurt” he said, looking at his watch with a flick of his wrist. Time: it takes, taunting you in circles.
Lost Ears
One morning, I woke up and realized that I had lost my ears. I looked under my bed, I couldn’t find them. I waited a day or two, they didn’t come back to me. I looked down often. I’d kick rocks or hide my tears. When I think of that time, I think of the color black, a heavy one. One day, my mom gave me a note. It was a yellow, folded piece of paper. She said to open it on the bus as she rushed me out the door. The red ink told me to keep my head up. So I tried. I looked at lips as they spoke to me. I even saw hands come alive. I saw smiles and I saw heartbreaks. I didn’t lose that morning, I found eyes.
Pain
One night, three years ago, I wrote a poem, almost by accident. I remember the sheer grief, how it took my breath away. Time passed so slowly, each second was painstaking. Each inhale, and then the exhale, was work. So much work. All I did was watch Forensic Files in my bed and occasionally eat cold leftovers. Sometimes, I went to work. Sometimes, I turned around on the way there, unable to see through my tears. Sometimes, I didn’t even get out of bed.
I’m sorry, by the way. Air was so heavy. Blades and fire were release, the grip on my chest, gone. Fix. I came to a point where I refused to be ruled by something so little. I’m not even sure what spurred that resolve, it had still hurt so much. I remember that night, the wave was coming. I lay in my bed, the next episode of Forensic Files was on. The wave crashed, and I laid there, bracing. I made myself feel everything, each sliver of glass. I let myself wash away instead of reaching out. It was then that something happened. Words came swirling. Gasping for air, I wrote them down. It was the first time I felt relief without hurting myself. I was never the same after that. I had something to say, a voice. It was just the beginning that night, basking in the light.
Sarah Alderfer is a 26-year-old nanny and nutrition student. This is her first published fiction.
Why we chose it: Sometimes a voice reaches out to you. It has less to do with story than with feeling, a sense of something rising up from the interior of the writing that transcends subject. When this submission came in, I was intrigued by the cover letter, which stated simply, “This is new to me. Thank you for your time and consideration.” A one-line bio followed the signature: “I am a 26-year-old nanny and nutrition student.“
I opened the file and read “Lost Ears.” It was strange and beguiling. Before I’d had time to wrap my head around it, I was moving on to “Pain.” The sense of intimacy deepened–the raw despair followed by the discovery of writing as a way out of the darkness. And then on to “Time,” the unusual assertion that “you’d think it’d be spun on wheels.” I loved reading “Time” because it places us with a character in a place and time, in motion, contemplating one of the great mysteries in a new way.
I am excited to see what Sarah Alderfer writes next. I expect we’ll be hearing more from her.
Michelle Richmond, Editor / Fiction Attic Press
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