—Praesens, Expenditus, Absolutus—
Chronos coils like molten aurum through our grasp,
its heft cognizable only in the pulse of Time.
No antecedent lends credence, no futurity preserves;
the contemporaneous alone adjudicates its coin against our marrow.
Respiration becomes legal tender; heartbeat, the irrevocable contract.
Each gaze, each gesticulation, a transient negotiation,
flaring and collapsing like ephemeral markets of umbra
we cannot master, only apprehend.
We discourse in fragments—chronicles of hours and quanta—
as if the ledger of existence might be reconciled.
Yet the cosmos remains uncounted, its obligations
inscribed in luminance and silence, trembling in its own shadow;
And in that tremor, we are born, spent, and unmade,
clutching the coin of now in trembling palms,
investing neither in timorous regret nor avarice,
for the treasury of eternity resides exclusively in immediacy.
Once the convulsion subsides, stasis returns.
We stand, unborrowed and unbought,
observing the inexorable flux of aeons,
and apprehend: naught endures save that which is expended righteously.
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