Audio: Read by the author.

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future at a rate of one second per second,
which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant committees and even to me.
But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next moment and to the next.
Thing is, I can’t turn it off. I keep zipping ahead— well, not zipping—And if I try
to get out of this time machine, open the latch, I’ll fall into space, unconscious,
then desiccated! And I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of that. So I stay inside.
There’s a window, though. It shows the past. It’s like a television or fish tank
but it’s never live, it’s always over. The fish swim in backward circles.
Sometimes it’s like a rearview mirror, another chance to see what I’m leaving behind,
and sometimes like blackout, all that time wasted sleeping.
Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment at having lost a library book.
Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting to be found charming.
Me holding a rose though I want to put it down so I can smoke.
Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me because the explosion
of some dark star all the way back struck hard at mother’s mother’s mother.
I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow. I thought I’d find myself
an old woman by now, travelling so light in time. But I haven’t gotten far at all.
Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I’d like; the past is so horribly fast.