And what can a person mean by saying he holds another person's time captive?

That is what he said to her, addressing the underwhelmed aplomb she used as retort to all such threats. He told her he was going to be difficult, and petty, but that the greatest of all frustrations would be her feeling that time was being wasted.

She smiled, warming, at the thought that he knew this about her, that she had a simultaneous passion for endless rest and endless rushing, and that in her mind everything was too interesting to be exhausted with the small amount of time one normally assigns to isolated events.

He knew she carefully strung all her activities together in a calamitous biographical web, and that she dreamed the intricacy and vulnerability of that web would someday captivate another soul for the duration of her life; she dreamt of being known, and to prepare, she sought to know herself.

And there would never be time enough, and he knew this, and so she smiled, and he was disarmed, and time was set on its course again, and they both noticed it slipping away.

 

© 2002 Joseph Robertson

 

TIME CAPTIVE
JOSEPH ROBERTSON

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