Buckeye

by Patrick Ryan

The things that we love tell us what we are.

Bigotry seemed to be a right some people thought they earned by paying taxes, and they weren’t about to have that right taken away.

I’m glad I stayed. The whole reason you build a bridge together is so the water can run under it, right? And not wash the two of you away? Sometimes one of you makes it flood, and then the water recedes.

What is it about time that confounds us? We spend it. We save it. We while it away. We waste it. We kill it. We complain about not having enough of it, or about having too much of it on our hands. We regret what we’ve done with it. We give it away. We want it back. We say “time and again” when something is bothering us and “it’s time” when something is supposed to end. Felix saw it so clearly: all we should ever want of time is more of it. Life was so simple when it was reduced to the barest of necessities: more time; more air; more Duke Ellington.

The wisdom that comes with age was needling, he found, because it brought the clarity of hindsight without the means to change anything.