This paper explores the infrastructural temporality of water infrastructure in the karst region of Gunungkidul, Java, Indonesia, challenging the dominant karst narrative as a convenient excuse for water scarcity. By adopting ‘infrastructural inversion’ (Star & Bowker, 2006) as a method in ethnographic fieldwork, this study delves into the local term mangkrak—literally translated as ‘stalled’ in English, but better understood in the sense of ‘suspension’ (Gupta, 2018). This local expression represents a deeper sense of despair towards unbuilt, unfinished, deteriorated, and abandoned water infrastructure. Rather than blaming nature, community members address infrastructural failure as a leading cause of water scarcity. Thus, this study adopts the concept of suspended infrastructure to examine how infrastructural breakdown represents not only technical malfunctions but also social processes that produce ‘disjunctive temporalities’ (Harvey, 2018), shaping how people perceive and experience time—the tension between past expectations, unfulfilled present realities, and uncertain futures.