"between the devil and the deep blue sea, we fly"

"because there in the sand of our shore, lies your fear"

The walls are the emptiest shade of grey, worn out by years of neglect, pinned against the canopy of her imagination by her enduring stares. The cracks and chips in the paint remind her of arteries and blood vessels, veins crisscrossing, as if part of a pounding human heart. The light plays softly on the uneven surface, highlighting certain features and irregularities, blending the sun into the dusty colour.

The window is wide open, letting in the summer air, filtered through the moldy curtains. The noise coming from outside fills the room, making it seem alive despite there being no sense of inhabitance. There is a slight breeze that moves the curtains, letting off the smell of age and solitude.

She stands by the window, motionless, surrounded by the invisible walls that growing old and lonely build around you. Her face is drawn, her skin taut against her bones, making her seem thinner than she really is. Thin lines creep at the edges of her eyes, a dark shade of coffee bean brown, and at the edges of her small mouth. Her hair is piled up in a tight bun, with just a strand or two of hair falling loosely on the sides of her face. Her skin is a pale white, with rosy hued cheeks and a wax-like quality to it. Her clothes clearly belong to the opposite sex-- a white, short-sleeved man's shirt, baggy and frayed around the collar and the hem, stained with either coffee or tea on the front, and dirty around the cuffs from having been worn too much; black men's trousers, far too large around the waist, barely held in place by a belt, rolled up several times to brush the ankles; grey socks, patched in a number of places, yet still with holes in them, exposing the heel and several fingers on both legs.

All over her arms and hands is written, over and over again, a date: 22nd of May. The same date appears around the house, embedded in different items: in the windowsill, next to a spot where the paint is burnt, the product of endless cigarette stubs having been put out; in the wooden table; it appears written on the front page of every single book, on scraps of paper all over the house, on bubble gum wrappers under the table and tissues scattered on the floor. It seems as if all the items in the house are linked to this common theme: time.

Yet the oddest thing yet is set neatly on all the walls, giving the place an eerie sense of having gotten lost in the flow of minutes, hours, days, months, years. Every bit of available space on the wall opposite the window is occupied by clocks of all shapes and sizes and colours, none of which works. They're all frozen at different moments in time, giving no real clue as to what the time is, in truth. She doesn't seem to be bothered by this; occasionally, she turns her head towards them, as if checking what time it is, then moves her gaze onto the door, as if she's expecting someone to walk right in any moment now. Her gaze is fixed, but lacking in dimension: heavily wrapped in her own perceptions, it seems that to her time is measured in the passing of cars on the street outside.

She looks all of a sudden ageless and aged at the same time; her skin places her somewhere in her late thirties, maybe early forties, while her eyes and her glossy expressionless features make her seem a creature set at the boundaries of time and space, capable of feeling their dimension but incapable of being affected by them. Her sadness seems to stand out, like a faithful shadow by her side, pushing her beyond the reality she seems to be part of.

Suddenly there's a soft noise, like a rustling of feathers as a bird settles to sleep, or like a faint heartbeat of a broken heart, bruised by loss. The smell of sickliness and dust covers the room like a warm blanket, probably the only clue as to how many years have really passed. Her gaze is fixed on the door, the sound humming gently in the background, like a far-off tune in a dream. And all of a sudden her face lights up into a beautiful smile, youthful and full of expectation, of wishes granted. Slowly, he walks towards her, arms outstretched to gather her into a warm embrace. His hair is coffee bean brown, just like her eyes, his skin is the colour of caramelized sugar, his arms are protective and secure as they take her frail form and rock it against his chest, his eyes are the pale green shade of late May.

They stand like that, locked together, his return worth every seemingly wasted second, as the clocks start their tick-tock noise in unison, the hands turning anti-clockwise, trying to find the lost thread where they left off, before having stopped.