What Can Happen in a Second?

In a Second

A rich man’s trash is a poor man’s treasure, buzzing with flies but shining like diamonds, the closest thing to pleasure.

Your favorite distiller, a bottle from a chateau in limestone Bordeaux, shatters onto the floor, like some kind of thriller.

A lonesome honeybee falls from a tree, landing on a little boy’s jeans. The sting intensifies—he hopes the bee doesn’t die.

Eyes lock from both sides of the crosswalk. What started at hello ended in I do. Now they have a child of two.

A teen driver speeds through an intersection. Two friends count their blessings— it only takes a second.

A starry-eyed dreamer was at the mall, where she saw a casting call. She lost her southern draw for stardom.

Depression is her nemesis. She pulls the trigger—she won’t be missed. The school cries, so do the girls who spread those lies.

Rain falls from the sky for the first time in months. A triumph for an island in the middle of the sea.

A man finds a pearl in an oyster; he holds it like a sacred scripture. The prize is his demise, but at least he took pictures.

One sneeze infects millions. A nation spends billions. It only takes a second to be the villain.

It only takes a second to be the hero, or a man with no ego. It only takes a second to lose it all—to find love, to fall.