Something Anew

​     by Eric Baronsky

​Staying awake longer. Into the longest hours, to accompany time on a slow and then slower walk. Traversing over, under, and around all the other times, crawling by their windows, still looking, still open. But they too shall shut and be...still. As the other siblings, tick and tock, sisters and brothers, conjoined yet constantly pulling, pulling apart, at the fragile seams. It seems that ticks prefer to race, by choice, tocks do not. Running to choose, freely. It is a choice to run. It is a choice not to run, also, from that which is front and center, in the heart of the matter, where the stitches of time do not resist or fray. Instead, patiently, they wait, without resisting, craving, only accepting and anticipating something anew. And somewhere else than where there is no more a... new, where ticks and tocks rewind wildly, wandering as a herd, lost ponies, together, lost as one. Instinctively, halting in unison. Unknowing of how, why, or why not. Suddenly, not needing to. It is a choice to need but not the only choice; there are many. And so, for the last longest hour, tocks are left alone in the desert of icy silence, without a tick to count... to count on. It is left searching in a vast prairie, in winter's blistering wastelands, a white drape over a forgotten hole. Alone to accept something anew to come front and center, to redeem and revive... whilst suspended over the frozen hands of time.