The Watchmaker

I wrote this story about regret for the smallest unit of time.

Not the big life-altering decisions, but the quiet, ordinary moments we assume will still be there later. A phone call we don’t take. A sentence we don’t finish. A person we mean to get back to when there’s more time.

I’ve long been struck by how much weight a single minute can carry. How something so small, so easily dismissed, can become the moment we return to over and over again. The one we wish we ‘d handled differently.

This story grew out of that idea—that time isn’t just something we move through, but something we make agreements with. We promise to show up, to respond, to say what needs to be said. And when we don’t, those moments don’t disappear. They remain… unfinished.

The clock shop became a place where those unfinished moments could be held. Not erased or undone—but revisited, at a cost. Because even the smallest correction requires something in return.

What unsettled me most while writing this wasn’t the idea of going back. It was the price.

That to reclaim one lost minute… you have to give up one you haven’t lived yet.

And that loss wouldn’t feel dramatic. It wouldn’t announce itself. It would simply be gone.

A quiet absence.
A moment you pass through without knowing what it should have been.

This story asks a simple question: if you could go back and finish one moment—

would you?

And what would you be willing to lose in return?