The Furrows

by Namwali Serpell

“This right here? This is time,” Mo repeated, staring me down. I sighed. “Okay. What’s time today?” I looked at the picture. “Some kinda tube?” “Nooo. It’s a rope. And what’s a rope made of?” “I don’t know, string?” “String. And what’s string got? Threads.” Mo sketched diagonal lines inside the tube to give it the twist of a rope. “So, this is what time looks like to us. A rope, a line pulled tight. But that’s just the past, the things that already happened, one after the other, in a line. But the future?” Mo drew a fan of lines at the top end of the rope, like it was unraveling. “Threads of possibility. Infinite threads. But you see, when time goes on, they get twisted together into the rope. The coulda-woulda-shouldas get twisted inside of what we did.”