This small brass watch has long forgotten how to tell the time, but it still knows how to hold a secret.

I found it nestled in a bed of wild garlic, its glass face cracked like the surface of a frozen pond. Once, this mechanism must have dictated a man’s pulse, urging him toward appointments and departures with its frantic, rhythmic heartbeat. Now, the gears are choked with silt and silence, surrendering to the slow, green breath of the spring afternoon. It is a peculiar human habit to measure life by the frantic ticking of a spring, as if a second could ever truly capture the weight of a blooming flower.
There is a profound freedom in a stopped clock; it finally allows one to listen to the things that do not shout. True communication is rarely found in the noise of the gears, but in the quiet spaces between the words. If you wish to understand another soul, you must first learn to sit as still as this brass shell, letting the world happen around you without trying to count its pulse.