We Spread

by Iain Reid

I wish I had done more. There’s not enough time for me now. I had years and years’ worth of time. It went so fast. It went too fast.

Why couldn’t it always be a work in progress? Why not let it remain forever unfolding? To keep that transfer going. Framing a finished painting on a wall was never my objective.

“It’s an understandable anxiety of matter, of mass,” says Hilbert. “Of life. A density. A burden to remain upright, to produce, to persist. I’ve felt it, too.”

“What if time was all you had?” I say. “Maybe if we had all the time in the world, life would start to feel meaningless. Or worse.”

It’s healing. I’m healing. I can still heal, I guess, even at this stage of life.

The tragedy of life isn’t that the end comes. That’s the gift. Without an end, there’s nothing. There’s no meaning. Do you see? A moment isn’t a moment. A moment is an eternity. A moment should mean something. It should be everything.”