Journal Entry

3:04 A.M.

The girl before me — perhaps me — walked forward, her shadow bending in the wrong direction.

Behind her, clocks fluttered. Somewhere far off, a clock began to unravel itself, its hands moving in directions clocks were never meant to move.

3:02 and 3:04 bled into each other, folding through me like cold silk.

And then the second noticing, but not seeing.

The face of the clock seemed to breathe — exhaling faded laughter of glittering hours that no longer mattered.

I reached toward it, but the air between us fractured like glass under frost.

This, I thought, is too strange to be real — yet it was real in the way insomnia makes everything possible.

Time bends. Shadows follow.

And somewhere beneath it all, her smile still lingers.