His fingers—spindly, delicate as a spider’s legs—
dart among the gears,
tools clink in whispers, sharp and sure.
He bends close, breath fogging the polished brass,
eyes fixed on the vortex of wheels,
lost in an intimate dance with time itself.
Springs curl tight,
a tension of secrets wound within.
Oil gleams, a hymn to motion,
its gloss anointing the mechanism’s skin.
Tick-tick—no sound yet.
Stillness reigns, like the breath before a scream,
the stars before their first fire.
He turns the key, deliberate and reverent,
and something stirs in the clock’s heart.
A pulse, faint but certain,
then steady as the tide’s pull.
Tick. Tock. Tick.
The room fills with sound,
the steady beat of existence made flesh in brass.
Oh, this perfection!
Each cog reflects order,
each tooth bites eternity,
a rhythm precise and relentless.
He leans closer,
his face mirrored on the glass,
a ghost adrift on the sweep of the second hand.
But doubt shadows him.
He knows:
No spring remains taut forever.
Rust seeps into even the finest gears.
The pendulum’s arc will falter,
its song stammer and fade.
Silence will follow,
not cruel, only inevitable—
like night chasing day.
He straightens,
polishes the brass until it glows,
as if to hold decay at bay.
In the ticking, he hears his own heart,
a metronome wound with dreams,
advancing forward, never back,
toward its own quiet end.
And as he closes the case,
the sound lingers.
Tick.
Tock.
Time moves, relentless,
offering promises it cannot keep.
