Where Reasons End 02 Waylaid by Days -1

Now we have our own rules, I said. A step toward somewhere, isn't it?
I didn't say how it had made breathing possible. Life, if not lived, is carried by automatic actions, breathing an inevitable one among them. Once at a party someone asked what were the qualities in other people that set one off. I said imprecision.
As though we haven't always lived by our own rules, Nikolai said. His tone, I imagined, would be the same as when he had once said-after I questioned what other mothers would think of his outfit, unsuitable for a concert he was going to—you don't even care what others think of you.
Have we always lived by our own rules? But more than the question, I was confused by the tense we used. Queries had been made, and advice given, regarding in what tense I spoke about Nikolai. Yet what makes was different from is, has been from will be? Timeless is this world we are making, tenseless its language.
Rules are set to be broken, he said.
Deadlines are set to be missed, I said. Deadline as a word used to fascinate me, a word that connects time and space and death with such absoluteness.
Promises are made not to be kept, he said.


Love is made not to last, I said. A contestable statement, though he chose not to argue. Love was the word we had used at his leave-taking, he knowing it was final, I sensing it was the case. But between sensing and knowing there were seven hours and four states. Only today did I register that people often in their condolence letters called the loss unfathomable. The distance at the moment of loss could be calculated: 189,200 fathoms. (What does it matter that fathom is no longer used to measure from here to there? To obsolete is to let age, from which death is exempted.)
Not clear, though, is how to fathom time: from a moment to...
Can forever be the other end point?
But why does it bother you if you insist time does not apply to us anymore? Nikolai said. Omniscience was taken for granted in this world where we met now, but omniscience I let only him claim.
You're breaking your own rules, he said.
Because time still confines and confuses me, I said.
Poor you, he said. Waylaid by time.
Waylay, I said. I've never used it in my writing.
No offense, but you don't have an expansive vocabulary.
Luckily my mind is not limited by my vocabulary, I said. (In my head I used the same tone that I had used when Nikolai had introduced me to his kindergarten class: My mom is an immigrant so she speaks English with an accent. Thank you my dear, I had said then, but I still make a living by writing in English.)
He turned quiet. I understood. Who wants to hear a mother boast about herself?
I turned quiet, too.