The face is friendly, with slender, graceful arms that I can’t see moving. Do they even? I will be looking at those cheerful, sans serif numbers for a long time. I am without a phone charger so I must just sit, just stare and stare. There is no room in the bed for me. I see the sweep of the red second hand. I look hard and realize when it is on three, six, nine, and twelve, the minute hand jumps a minikin quarter of a space. Then I look at the bed with the guardrails, at my daughter sleeping.
Jill Pabich, an award-winning artist, has been published in Five Minutes and artwork and essay in the anthology Heroic Care. Instagram, photography: @jillpabichphotography, Instagram: magical realism painting @jill_pabich