Fleeting steps taken one at a time. Every stride sinking down into sand. Pulling close to-the end wherein all that is left corrodes to absent sparks. Moving, moved, spinning hands circling the dial like vultures. Plucked picking hands pulling soul, ripping from body. Tear away love, passion, joy. Leaving grieving deserts of hour glass sandy dunes.
       Erode bodies. Erode vitality. Falling dead falling rot. Not enough time to take life slow, slowly slipping from my hand the chance to...
       Chance encounters. A moment, a flash, a cosmic change, chance ordained. A meeting, a departure, a flip of the coin. You. Here. How? Why? What are the chances? All there is, all that was, all that led here. Led you here.
        At one time, before time, there was nothing but time. Nothing. Nothing. Waiting for something. Nothing but waiting. Then something. A spark. Chaos. Disordered noise, backdropped radiation for the next end of time. Quarks swarm out the hive of creation, pollinating a desolate expanse. Orbiting, uniting, planting atom seeds. Time and its attractive lover, water and fertilize cosmic gardens. A field of stars, a forest fire of novas, and new growth from the ashes. New seeds, new life.
       Volatile star, O home of many. One home who finds more than lifeless wonders. One home who finds the light of creation by drawing energy from the light of the created.
        Time pulls life along. Tells them to grow up. Grow eyes, extremities, move out. Out of the ocean, onto land. Go out and make it big kid, time will always be waiting for you back home.
        Toil, work, survive. The same back then as now. Different time, different landscape, same basic need, same eternal struggle. Build your huts, build your cities. With time, advance to the new age. Grow, children of Earth, and eat all that time and its attractive lover gave you. Consume, use up, decimate for it is in your nature to take what you believe is yours. Time and its attractive lover will always be waiting for you in the end. Arms open, gentle smiles, affirming nod. You made a difference they will say, No matter how small your actions, you have altered the outcome of the future in both micro and macro ways. That is the nature of existence. That is the nature of fate. That is the nature of time and its attractive lover
        A blip. A moment. A spark. A flash. A second. A flicker. A wink. A beat. A microscopic dot on the map of infinity. O bringer of change, O harbinger of entropy, spare us your mournful beauties and grace us with easy pleasures. For our spark that jumped from primordial fires is not long for the world, sizzling out the moment it's birthed.
        Perhaps, there is something to look forward to when the last hourglass sand falls. Perhaps there is a hand, not time, not its attractive lover, but something beyond that takes our hourglass and turns it over. Sands of life falling on a new day. Perhaps we will not carry the same form, or any form for that matter. Perhaps all we are is drifting energy that, for the moment, is governed by time and its attractive lover, and it is only this body that is the shackle from a greater existence. But hypotheticals have no place here when reality sings in mournful beauties and easy pleasures. A world with pain, joy, love, grief, loss, warmth, wonder, hardship, trials, splendor is a gift so great it must only be repaid through its passing, for even that holds its own beauty.
        Fifteen seconds goes by so quickly. It makes me question how many more thirty seconds do I have left? But that's probably just the grief talking. Maybe I shouldn't concern myself with how much life I have left, and I should just start focusing on living. I'll keep trying to do that, even if my first inclination is to worry about that hourglass sand. I'll keep trying.