Hourglass

Streaks staining threads. Dirt dusting soles. I watch as she plays in the sandbox. Building sandcastles and knocking them down. Up, down, up, down. She chuckles as she knocks them over, laughs as she builds them again; never giving up in rebuilding her fortress. But now she is digging. Digging and searching for something only she knows. Or maybe she is burying something, hiding a toy she will later find as buried treasure. She lives in her world of saturated colours and cuddles, paying no attention to the outside.

There is no room for sleep or bath time in her doll house. No time to waste in braiding hair at her tea parties. There are new friends to meet, new things to learn. She lets me tuck her in at night only so that the next day will come quicker.

Streaks staining threads. Dirt dusting soles. She drags herself home, painfully aware of the outside. Saturated colours melt into grey as days pass into weeks into months into years. I watch as she grows older, no longer lost in her own world but lost in herself. There is now time for sleep but no room in her mind for rest. Time for baths but no hope of being clean. She collapses each night so that the day will end and fights the morning so the day doesn’t have to start.

Every sunrise that comes brings a moment of remembrance. Crimson, navy, indigo and ochre covering a canvas of beige. Ebony and slate washing out minutes of hours of days.

I see her toeing the sandbox where she used to play and upsets the sand. Pink pops out. It is her doll; doe-eyed and rosy. A reminder of her saturated colours and cuddles but covered in dirt and sand. She picks her doll up, smooths out her ringlets and her doll gazes back at her. Her doll has not aged in years and she thinks that ignorance pays for immortality. She lets go and her dolly falls down, down back to the ground where other left over toys and half-built sandcastles lie.

Streaks staining threads. Dirt dusting soles. I watch her as she turns away, not bothering to rebuild her crumbling sandcastle.