During these silent hours, her mind drifts to unfinished errands and domestic anxieties, such as an afternoon shopping trip or how quickly her children are outgrowing their clothes.
The poem has found new relevance in the post-pandemic world, where so many people watched loved ones deteriorate via video calls or through the glass of a hospital window. The feeling of watching time tick away helplessly is a universally traumatic experience, and Chua validates that trauma with grace and precision. countdown by grace chua
At first she treated it like a prank. Her brother laughed over video when she showed him the photos. "Old wiring, weird display," he said, but his hands trembled when he replaced the bulb in the hall and the digits kept moving. Mei checked every circuit, every app on her phone, every dusty box from the landlord's storage room. The clock lived nowhere and everywhere, a thing that had been there long before the realtor's key had clicked in her new apartment and that would go with her if she left. During these silent hours, her mind drifts to
After midnight, the tired astronaut surveys her chrometop kitchentop and counts the hours down till the alarm-clock rings. Thinks of yesterday's shopping trip the kids outgrowing their shoes again and such unfinished things. Daytime, and her mother-ship shuttles its small satellites from playschool to violin class, the swimming pool, art lessons, ballet, and feeds them at irregular intervals in a twenty-four-hour tour of duty. The washing machine groans. Pipes swish, the dryer roars. She wishes she were in a vacuum, not vacuuming or doing dishes. She longs to be in the dark, and young, with star-fields leaping light-years beyond time's gravity. And peers out of the window at the night, and counts down hours till the end, craning her neck, till all the clocks break free. At first she treated it like a prank
Readers often find themselves drawn to "Countdown" during their own periods of loss because it validates the "smallness" of early grief. It doesn’t ask the mourner to find meaning or "move on"; it simply sits with them in the kitchen, watching the clock.