I turn the gold hands of the watch you gave me. Always turn them clockwise, you told me, never backward — it’s bad for the gears. Time should always move forward. The hour hand whips past twelve. The sun rises, and light streams into my small room. For the few moments I spend between waking and sleeping, I can almost forget where I am. But slowly my senses return. My mouth is dry (here, there is no bedside table on which to place a glass of water), beads of sweat form on my forehead (here, on the sixth floor, the heat is unrelenting), and I feel knots of bright pain in my back (here, my mattress is hard and unforgiving). Finally, I open my eyes.
The birds screech outside my window. They make strange, foreign sounds, like I’ve never heard before. I consider texting you a video — perhaps you could identify them — but think better of it. Halfway across the world, you lay down your head to sleep after a long day. You used to have a digital clock that projected the time on the ceiling in red. I see it when I close my eyes. 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
I miss you.
When our house was home — the smell of food in the kitchen. The carrots you let me chop and the band-aid you helped me put on when I cut my finger with the knife. Old episodes of Jeopardy always on in the background — your voice, shouting out the answers from the other room. A clumsy Für Elise, ringing out from the living room, where you took your piano lessons. The warmth under your covers and the glow of the TV in the dark room. Moonlight and the distant glow of the city outside your window, flickering across the quilted bedspread. Your fingers dancing affectionately across my scalp. They seemed to spell out a message, something that can’t be said over a garbled trans-continental phone call.
— I love you!
…
— Mom, can you hear me?
We were so close once. Now I see you in slow-moving pixels on my phone. I hear your voice in blips — your words truncated, their meaning lost somewhere between here and there — perhaps carried away by Appalachian winds, condensed in the morning dew somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, or else swallowed by the Atlantic, like sugar cubes in a cup of hot tea. All this space between us, every contour of the Earth — its sprawling mountain ranges, huge, crowded cities, and long ocean shores — collapses into one unsurmountable horizon separating you from me.
These days I only see you clearly under the harsh bathroom light. Each morning and night, as I brush my teeth or take off my makeup, I take myself in. The slope of my nose and the sharp curve of my jaw. My hair, a frizzy mess, like a halo above my head. My dark, but sparse eyebrows and the freckles that pepper my cheeks in the summertime. You’re written all over me. In the mirror, if nowhere else, I’ll always see you looking back at me.
— Mom, are you there?
…
— I can’t hear you.
I use my index finger and thumb to hold the watch steady as I change the time with my free hand.
Christmas morning, years ago now. The box it came in was dark red leather; beautiful in its own right. As if in reverence, I let myself feel the weight of it in my palms, let myself revel in its solidity, like it was the most precious thing I had ever seen.
Whenever I look down to check the time, I picture you there on Christmas day, smiling as I finally opened the box. I see you seeing me, awestruck. You helped me fasten the watch around my wrist. There, now you look like a real young lady, you said. I remember looking down at it — the way the thin gold band caught the light, the way it glittered when I moved my arm — and thinking I had never loved anything more. I remember looking up at you and thinking I had never loved anyone more.
Now I turn the knob, and my time speeds away from yours.
— Well, it’s almost 11:00 here.
…
— Goodnight.
I love you.
I start the clock again, and everything springs into motion.
The minute hand, the hour hand, and your hand in mine. The clock face and yours — smiling on Christmas, distorted over FaceTime, forever facing me in the mirror.
Time always moves forward.