Catch Time in a Bottle

She walked away, carrying a bottle of clouds and sunshine, letting it loose. His eyes followed her, creased with the passion of a crescent moon shining down from the night sky. He found his hand atop the lid of a bottle encasing a sunset; the top unscrewed so easily, unfolding its contents to the pallid sky, slapping paint onto the white sheet of a pallet. He remembered what it was like, capturing time . . .

He leaned back, furrowed eyes deepening in contentment as he fiddled with another bottle in his hands. A crisp cloud resonated from the jail of glass. He remembered how the clouds used to puff and swirl, evaporating slowly into a bottle held by his once shivering hands. He had waited all night to catch those roaming tigers on the mountainside, listening to their rumbling roars and echoing tendencies of lightning, rain, and thunder. And so, the capture was worth it when that first ray of sunlight spilt through the horizon. The color-so vibrant-and the vapor of clouds-so white . . . The stroke of time was perfect, and another moment crept into the bottle, captured and whole and crisp-just like a photograph, but tangible.

What if you could bottle up a piece of life? That had been his question for many years-one that he never could seem to place in a bottle itself.

He knew full well that captivating a moment was not a splash in a puddle or a dance in the rain, but it was a true art, a love of what you captured, a thirst for something pure-truer to form than could ever be defined by two-dimensional things.

Take a cloud, for example-their white tufts swirl and transform, move and dance, among the azure wisps of wind above your reach, and yet if you take the time to fancy them in a picture, all is lost as if you just tried to catch the vapors with your bare fingers, watching them sift through the cracks in your hand . . . He never realized that his art was the same, prosaic action-trying to capture something so untamed and wild in itself that if you did survive the capture, it would be a pity to master something so beautiful.

When he dropped his work for a moment, carving his way into the streets of the city, it was as if everything changed.

The woven streets of Venice wound their ways alive with people, stirring and striving toward a destination of even more busyness and bustling. But, something seemed amiss-the old man who bottled time strolled, PIT after PAT of his shoes atop the crags of brick and stone. He sighed, shallowly, almost absently, filching a glance at the perfect, blue sky. But, it was not the sky that moved him to sigh; it was only its picture that made him blind to his reasoning of why he was so distraught and distant to the thing he loved most-his art.

Then, something weaved its way into his head amongst the blurs of people, the striking tossing and turning of each head, and the rocking of his body . . . A whisper twirled upward into his ears as he pulled his cart along, fashioned with all manner of shining bottles that cradled moments unspent, un-relished, un-enjoyed.

"Sir," the tone persisted.

He kept on, still transfixed upon the focus of listlessness, his sadness contained inside.

"Sir?" the murmur hung in his ears, like a dribbling beat of a mallet upon the stretched-top of a drum.

He turned.

"Yes, little one . . . what may I do for you?" He crouched, smiling slightly as he followed her expression that wound its way toward the bottles; this was the expression that would forever transform his perspective.

"Your bottles. They're beautiful." She replied to his stillness.

"Would you like one?" His rejoined came to a shallow end as her eyes almost blistered with glossy tears.

He had not taken the time to notice the rags about her body.

"Oh . . . no . . ." She sheepishly rocked herself backward a hair.

His smile faded, falling on the pavement, and at once, his true self came through, twisting the edge of his own bottle's top.

"I was just wondering, though . . . if you are so concentrated on bottling a moment up, how can you truly enjoy the scene?" Her eyes lifted to his, and you could say that her eyes held the first splashes of true color that he had seen in a long time.

It was then that he realized that you cannot truly enjoy a moment in its entirety if you are too worried about capturing the scene, the masterpiece, because if you do capture it, the awe of that unbridled stallion will fade, breaking its Wild.

Crackkk! Splissse!

The bottles shattered, leaving a vision that would send your world turning.