No time is the right time is scrawled on every subway wall, but still I keep on searching. I’m the nameless Prince in Cinderella, trudging the land in increasing desperation, in search of a moment that’s a perfect fit. I arrive at the house of a pair of sisters who, like me, have lost their names along the way, and who are neither wicked nor ugly, though online trolls have done their best to taint their reputations for the millions upon millions who will never meet them: and they invite me in to wait for the chime of midnight, when we’re sure something significant will happen. It doesn’t, of course, but Cinderella rolls home, shoeless, arm in arm with Buttons, both of them laughing, because they’re young, beautifully ordinary, and the only people in the whole made-up world who have their own names. There’s no time like the present, they sing like picture book bluebirds as the clock strikes thirteen. It’s still not the right time, but it will do forever after.

Bio: Oz Hardwick