Seconds are heavens. They're minuscule firmaments.

Fleeting memoirs in movement, of misery and merriment.

Deserters by character.

Evaders by characteristic.

Mockers by choice.

Harbingers of nostalgia

Creatures of no mercy, no teeter

Promises of a larger minute

Or of a minute future.

Evidences of the fleet feet of flowing frames

Frequently freckled with

Thoughts or silhouettes or actions or regrets

Or cuckoos.

Their ticks are not ethereal. They're weaved into the world.

They're a parody of the universe.

A downscaled visage of existence.

Entrapping and unleashing at once.

Captors to the ocean of truth and lies, unobtrusive voyeurs

To unlucky exchanges of forgotten love.

And he whose final moments frolick

Beneath his bedpost, memories in eyelids

Will well remark how these little skittles topple him over

With frustration,

And a desire to silence them

For good.

They're suns, these seconds.

Peeking out from the mist of their dials

Glancing at the world once, sidling behind a cloud the next

Obscure in patches, in others blatant

But always pervading,

Always existent.

And at night they make love to your ears

And shut sleep out with the rust-flaked grills

Who says there's time to heal?

Who says there's time to kill?

What ghost of a life will be mended

With the same ticks that

Resounded,

Loud, almost vulgar

Parodying a heart that once had beat and loved?

What dagger can pierce and outduel

Creatures of no fears, no fuel

That breathe in decay, and drudgery

And breathe out recovery, renewal?

Neither friend nor foe, seconds hold their own

In tick or cuckoo, alarm or groan

Peppering my skin, or peppering silence,

Connecting me to the past, severing me from the present

For were it not for these wall-mounted devils

I would've long been a bent, broken abyss

And lest I ever feel sad and reminiscent

They make me feel small and insignificant.

Seconds they're called, for none of them is first,

They plough temporal dust, disdainful and proud,

And yet, you'll smile at the best of them

Before you make your way to shroud.