Still Point Turning

Sunlight angled through the workshop window caught the dust swirling around the clock’s internal gears—each tooth filed smooth by repetitions no longer occurring. A restorer's fingers traced a hairline fracture in an antique vase, noting how the damage wasn’t simply absence, but a reshaping born of past impacts. The effort to repair felt less like reversing time and more like acknowledging its passage, recognizing that even molten glass remembers heat within its cooled form. Holding the piece, one could almost feel those former forces pressing against their skin; the weight of what had been settled into something new.