Two Years for One Small Number

Late at night, a small rented room, nothing lit but the screen throwing light back up at his face. He didn't mean to pick up the phone. It was just in his hand. The first thing on the feed is an old friend, standing in front of a new house.

Twenty-five, an ordinary salary, two years to put aside one small amount. He knows exactly what that number is — it's in the notebook on his desk, added up month by month in his own handwriting. But nothing scrolling past him has a number attached. Only pictures. He keeps going for a while, then stops: the one who posted every month hasn't posted anything in weeks.

Last month, at a sidewalk coffee place, that same friend sat across from him and talked about what he'd made. The new bike was parked right outside, under a streetlight that had just come on. He listened, and drank until the ice was down to one piece. Walking past this month, the bike is still there — with a handwritten sheet of paper taped to the windshield, one strip of tape at each corner.

Tonight he opens his banking app. The number is short enough that he doesn't need to read it carefully. Then a message comes in. The person who was ahead of him is asking to borrow, and he's the one who has it on hand. He sends it, doesn't write anything else, doesn't tell anyone. The notebook is still open on the desk — twenty-four columns, all about the same height, not one of them short.

Being slower than someone else isn't losing. Everyone's clock runs at its own speed.

The little plant in the clay pot on the windowsill grows month by month too, slowly enough that nobody has ever photographed it. Whose clock have you been measuring yourself against?