I have been thinking a lot about time in these past few months. Like all of you, I have been living in quarantine—the days blending into one another more than usual. But I also became a mother in April. And time changed. I would wake up before the baby and look at the clock (6:00 a.m.) then close my eyes for what felt like mere seconds and wake to her crying—suddenly it’s 7:30 a.m. I’d say to myself, “I’m going to bounce her for five more minutes.” I’d bounce and bounce and bounce and yet when I looked at the clock not even a full minute had passed! Which is to say that time seems so objective and yet our experience of it is entirely subjective.
Or, as Sofia Dardzinski writes in her poem “Decisions,”
A clock tells time
I believe it tells time from its perspective
Every clock is different
Every clock has a different view of things
The poems, stories, and personal narratives in this issue are all thinking, in their own way, around this idea of time, and often of loneliness, too—a condition that makes us even more attuned to the clock than usual.
I hope reading this issue will allow you to experience a time distinct from the time of your daily life!
