The boy watches the clouds pass. Wispy vapours curl into the endless blue. The boy wears no watch. The kitchen clock is hidden from view by the backdoor, left ajar. The shadows of the trees stay their motion. There is just the gradual rhythm of his heart in his chest, drumming a steady pace. But it counts no minutes and no hours. He feels no sense of anything passing, besides the clouds. There is no desire to watch grains of sand run down a glass bulb, slipping into stasis below. He does not wish the clouds would go faster, or slower, or even that they will stay their course. He doesn’t wish for much. He is present. He feels the sun on his skin and the breeze run across his lips. He can smell the lavender from the garden next door and hear the soft hum of the bees buzzing around the bush. There’s a memory being made here, and not one easily found. There’s nothing for it to rub against, to stick to, no defining event that all the touches and smells and colours can tie themselves to. It is a soft memory. A memory as wispy and free as the clouds, forever floating through consciousness at its own pace, with no desire to change or make itself known. But it’ll come back to him, one day or another. When he’s blinked and woken up old, this memory will pass by his eyes as something new, yet familiar. Something known but not often acknowledged. And he will recall the beauty of doing nothing inside an infinite summer.
Paddy Dobson
2nd April 2021