Time runs whether or not you’re done.
The pendulum stops for no one.
We dance against its idiot beat—
No hope of winning, just move the feet.

A child’s laugh before the laugh learns grief.
A warmth stolen by the clock’s slow teeth.
The crinkle in her eyes, that small betrayal.
A firefly’s last flare—born bright, born frail.

The leaf’s slow fall. The bloom’s first blush.
A ray of light the winter couldn’t crush.
We keep these fragments—not because they stay;
Because they prove we held the day.

The twilight comes the way all endings do.
It scatters us to places we never knew.
The rooms still echo with voices, undefined.
The walls still hold a warmth we’d left behind.

Dust inherits everything we made.
The Earth collects debts never paid.
But once—just once—we held the light.
A match head struck against the night.