What if each rise and fall of breath didn’t remind us that we are all born, simply to die? What would we discuss then?
If seconds didn’t turn to minutes, which failed to stretch into hours, that forgot to languish into days. If the earth didn’t spin while it circled the sun, if the seasons didn’t show us that we are almost another year older since that heartbreak, since the day where we almost didn’t make it through.
What if time ceased to exist? What would we talk about then?
What if we could not (were unable to) reference what came before or what’s to come? The eternal present and nothing more. No expectation, no staggering pain of the past. Would conversation exist?
What if wrinkles didn’t cross our face, more grooved with each passing year? What if age spots didn’t tell the story of our summers? What if our bodies never broke down, backs never got stiff?
What if our hearts beat with vigor - forever?
If there wasn’t time here, would there be anything to talk about? Maybe we’d linger on a drop of dew on the honeysuckle in the field where our dogs play keep away in the morning.
But, maybe that requires time too.
If there wasn’t a past here, a little girl in Montana who once rode piggyback through a freshly cut wheat field, with a farmer whose boot nearly made contact with a tightly coiled rattlesnake.
If there wasn’t a future here, an old woman, spine bent from years of hand work. Eyes cloudy, a left ear gone muffled long ago, what would there be to talk about?