It is an agitating sensation, almost pleasurable—the feeling of coming up to a steep and impenetrable deadline. It puts you in mind of the egg timer, which was your lola’s favorite toy. She used that cranked ovoid contraption when she steeped her tea. She used it when she baked with the clay oven. She used it to startle you awake from a nap. When you think of the egg timer, you think of old hands, white-knuckled, winding the spring. You think of tension wire, held at a gasp between two opposing poles. You think of its insides ticking, ticking away; a sound that has never left you, just as she
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