When is a minute more than a minute?

When you've just missed the bus.

Then, standing in the plume of exhaust, you reflect back on your morning and find it filled at its dusty corners with wasted moments. Do they all come together to add up to this? Add up to you, cold, limping, and late for class?

If only you had managed to find a pair of socks on the first try, instead of rummaging desperately like you always do. If only the dog had come in when you called, instead of taking a final swipe at the compost pile. If only you hadn't checked the headlines to see if the Pope had finally died (why won't you die, you bastard?!). If only the coffee hadn't spilled across the counter, soaking some important-looking financial aid documents, which then needed to be blotted between paper towels. If only you hadn't lingered over the hutch, biting the ends off of grapes and stroking a small, angry bunny.

Moments add up to minutes, minutes to hours, and hours to days. It all stretches and contracts, and I only understand the container by what I put in it. Silly, I know.

Time doesn't exist for me to fill it with distraction, with wind-mill tilting, with chocolate cake baking and silver-leaved raking.

I think I exist for time to use. Like a small bit of oil, not even a cog, not even a wheel, in some machine of grand designs.