In the microwave is a mug with water I heat to make witching hour tea and fall asleep before prising. On the microwave is the time - the *wrong* time - and I stop. I think about changing the time. Letting the time be schornked on meaning, to tell me. Tell me to immediately dismiss its green text on late blue is to forget how I look, now, at the buttons, searching for time tools.
[image of microwave, the buttons are crunchy, the add 30 secs impossibly shredded, directions to change the time are archaic and faded, involve holding certain buttons a certain length, time is two hours as of this sentence]
It's not a true late. The time can't, say, find a nmemonic that leans with me into how late exactly the hours, how early precisely the minutes, render the message world-leakinging accurate.It could, though, everything its throughline in alignment, that's how water works. I eventually, finding a fork, jabbing a potato I wash, carry, and rest in the microwave, learn I did not dream the late-night mug heating.
There it is, I remove it. I microwave the potato by hitting the potato button and then start. Just like a game, the potato goes on a loop, transforming, experiencing a world of thermal combustion planets collide over. I guess I did wake up after all. It wasn't a dream, then. A leafblower wafts in the window. I look out. Sunlight reflects off every leaf.
I feel, as leaves move, yesterday's moss under my butt. Riverwater an armspan before me jumping hydraulically higher than my head. Green as the parts between leaf and sky too ambiguous to differenciate. As I move my eyes back to the microwave, for a moment, I catch the color of that river in the green light of the time it displays, too far from here to read.