Time is a human construct, much like donuts and nuclear warheads. Time always seems to slip out of my hands and into my coffee cup. Why else would drinking coffee run me late in the mornings? Perhaps I swallow the minutes. That would explain the heartburn.  

What is time for you—a calendar of appointments and deadlines? A buzzing alarm clock? A loop of hitting snooze? An endless rushing with dry throat, and constricted chest? Does time ever hush, ever sit quietly for you? Where are you, if and when it does? Have you fallen into the pages of a book? Are you in a conversation seems to bridge your past, present and future to another’s? Are you sitting on the couch and drinking a glass of wine at the end of the day? Are lying on park grass with the heavy afternoon sun blanketing you and insects humming you to sleep?

Write about time and when it stops, if it ever does for you. Use metaphors and sensory images—ticking clocks, rushing rivers, a rustling field of corn, a thrumming engine—however you construct the concept of time. For inspiration, read Brenda Hillman’s “Time Problem” and notice the mix of the mundane and the personal with the theoretical.