A Thief Named Time

 “Time is a thief,” I say to the window, fogged by my breath and the steam from my coffee. “It steals your thoughts, emotions, and youth.”

“Hey,” the waiter says, topping me off. “We don’t get many thieves in here before noon.”

“I’m serious,” I reply. “Time passes in the blink of an eye. You turn around and twenty years have passed.”

A chair across from me scrapes. A man in a well-worn coat slides in without asking. His watch has no hands.

“Name’s Time,” he says. “I pay in memory.”

“Figures,” I mutter. “Hair a little thinner, laugh lines deeper, and crow’s feet around the eyes. Yet my mind still sees a bright, exuberant twenty-something kid who has the rest of his life in front of him.”

Time smiles, gentle, almost apologetic. “I didn’t take your brightness. I just… traded it for texture.”

“I enter into shock when I look in the mirror,” I say, “to see a face looking back at me that I don’t recognize. How do I make peace with that?”

“Talk to the mirror,” Time says. “It talks back when you’re brave enough to listen.”

I stand, leave the booth, and step into the narrow restroom. Fluorescents hum. The mirror waits, flat and honest.

“Be kind,” the Mirror says first, beating me to it. “You asked for a life with stories. Stories leave marks.”

“My future is still in front of me,” I tell the glass, “but that thief—Time—is now chasing me instead of me chasing it.”

From the stall, a voice coughs politely. An older woman steps out with a silk scarf and a weather app open on her phone.

“I’m Weather,” she says, patting my shoulder. “I’ll turn on the rain right when you’re ready to leave the house and make your knees predict the seasons. It’s not personal.”

Behind her, a man with a salt shaker peeks in. “Food,” he says, slightly guilty. “I used to love you without conditions. Now I show up with labels and consequences.”

A tall figure leans on the sink, bones like scaffolding under a good suit. He nods. “Age.”

“So you’re all my villains,” I say.

“Villains?” Weather chuckles. “We’re thresholds.”

“We’re pacing,” Age adds. “I just keep the beat.”

Back at the table, two new faces have taken seats in my absence—young, bright-eyed, hands still talking even when their mouths pause.

“We’re the unexpected new friends,” they say, overlapping. “We enter your life, show you how you used to be, and show you you still can be.”

“Is that allowed?” I ask.

“Only if you let it,” one says. “Borrow our spark.”

“Trade us your steadiness,” says the other.

Time sips my coffee like it belongs to him. “You don’t have to defeat any of us,” he says, nodding toward the door where Food, Weather, and Age have drifted back into the city. “You just have to make room at the table.”

I slide into the booth again. Outside, a bus sighs at the curb. A kid runs past the window, shoelace trailing like a comet’s tail. The world keeps happening at street level—dogs tugging leashes, someone laughing too loud, someone crying into a scarf, the traffic light catching every face in the same green wash for three patient seconds.

“I still will look forward to tomorrow with excitement,” I say, “yet a bit of trepidation.”

“That’s how you know you’re alive,” Mirror calls from the hallway, somehow still listening.

I look at Time. “Can I do everything I put off doing in the time I have left?”

Time sets the cup down, coffee ring like an eclipse on the saucer. He leans in.

“Start one thing,” he says. “Then let it introduce you to the next.”

The unexpected friends grin. Age lifts two fingers in a casual salute. Weather cracks the door to let in a clean draft. Food slides a plate across—simple, warm, enough.

“Okay,” I say, feeling the room steady around me. “Okay.”

And for once, Time doesn’t answer. He just nods, and lets me.