Watches for Women III - The hour hand trembles on the edge of goodbye

She watches the seconds slip by, each one heavy with a memory she can’t touch. The air still smells of him, faint cologne, smoke and the ghost of promises spoken too softly to last. Time moves but she doesn’t. Every hour since his departure feels unfinished. She winds the watch each night, a ritual of denial as if the delicate click might rewind the words they never said. The dial gleams against her wrist, cruelly precise. A letter arrives. Unmarked. Inside, only a pressed flower and the faint outline of his handwriting a single phrase she can’t forget: “Meet me where time stands still.” The watch stops ticking at that moment. She wears it anyway, the silent watch, its still hands resting against her pulse. It no longer marks hours, only moments the pause before a kiss, the breath between heartbreak and surrender. Sometimes she swears she feels it tremble again, just before midnight as though the hour hand still remembers what it’s waiting for.