Silva Pius, 19 years old Silva.w.pius@gmail

Time is mans greatest enemy, a devil that shouldn’t be trusted. We build glorious sky scrapers that ascended majestically into the sky, giving us the small glimmer of hope that if they are big enough, we might be able to climb them and get just that little bit closer to the stars we dreamed for so long about touching. We build bridges that are a declaration of our desire to bring us closers with our lost brothers; our skin complexions on the surface may mismatch but below, our separate hearts pump the same blood. We build temples to feed our souls, restaurants to feed our bodies and school to feed our minds. But once again time understands no compassion as it unashamedly degrades and rotes our foundation, and soon rejoices as it causes our buildings to tumble down like feeble houses of cards, until they are swallowed up again by the same earth they once came from, like a sinister unyielding cycle. Without our building, our dreams of living amongst the starts are never realized. If not close together then we must be divided. But worse of all our souls, bodies and minds go hungry.

I looked out to my garden filled with endless beauty that Mother Earth bestowed upon its children; the rose is the epitome of the tender kisses that cupid places on each of our hearts. The sunflowers are Mother Nature’s very own sky scrapers, bending and twisting impossibly around my shed, driven by thirst to take another refreshing drink of sun light. The sweet sincere orchids conduct a silent symphony to the human ear that will never take pleasure in hearing, but to the bees ears it’s an awe inspiring adore to Mozart and with every carefully placed note, it draws them ever more tantalisingly closer. But even Mother Nature’s perpetual splendour is no match for the wicked spite of time, as it applauds as the wind erases the loving essence of the rose, until its nothing but a blackened bulb that has lost all its light. The backs of the sunflower soon lose all their limber, and their ballerina elegance is washed away with the rain. Like us the bees go death to the songs of the orchids as the weeds slowly constrict their vocal cords, silencing them forever.

Like Freddy Kruger, time makes all our nightmares a reality as we slowly watch all the warmth and vigour that our grandparents once possessed in abundance, slowly seep out of their skin and leave only a withered empty shell behind. Their sharp wit and humour is slowly dulled, until they can laugh no more when their own minds betray them like their bodies did long ago. Then the unbearably painful happens and we lose them forever, but time doesn’t speak our language, it knows not the meaning of mercy, because everything that was them, their passion, their laughs their cries, is just another fading memory that time soon takes away from us as well.

Address: 5 Stratheden Place, Weldale street. RG1 7BH