The Weight of Ink

We are taught that time is a river. It is not. Time is a stack of papers, folded and unfolded, passed from hand to hand until the edges fray. Each morning, the world is printed anew, a fresh layer of ink to cover the silence of the night. We read to know where we stand, yet the news is always the same: someone is arriving, someone is leaving, and the train is always pulling away from the platform. There is a specific heaviness to a bundle of newsprint. It carries the burden of things we have not yet done and things we can no longer change. We trade coins for these stories, hoping to find a piece of ourselves in the headlines, but the paper only grows damp in the humidity. Does the ink ever truly dry, or does it just wait for the next rain to wash the day away?

Shahnaz Parvin has captured this stillness in her image titled The Paperboy. She finds a quiet commerce amidst the rush of the station. Do you see the weight he carries?