Eroding time carries away our lives as we desperately cling to shifting sand. We grope for memories now beyond our grasp and unfulfilled dreams that have crumbled to dust. The years behind us are splattered emotions that flicker like a flame in their uneven clarity.  We try to touch the fleeting images. We caress and coax abandoned thoughts of who or what from memories we’ve tucked away in a box. The shifting sand waits for no one. It has the luxury of immortality. It never tires of its motion nor feels the weight of worry.  It moves without concern for yesterday, today, or tomorrow. Living with the sand is our fate.  We are destined to slide. From the moment of our birth, we cup our hands against the flow, and we begin collecting the tiny fragments of time. We hold them in our fingers, proof that we exist. When age begins to enhance the motion, when the sand moves quicker and quicker, we hold a little tighter and tighter still. Until our clenched fists ache and the grip weakens. It is then that some, not all, set aside their box of memories for someone else to keep. Their treasure trove of trinkets and faded photographs that tell, perhaps not the world, but someone, I lived. Then cupped in the hands of eroding time we slip away with the sand.