A new stage, wave after wave. Sit still, do not part. A broken heart lays distant, distant and grave are many; the souls I have watched buried. Heart after heart, a new one built another broken. Seeing them depart, one by one. Replaced by their kin, replaced by what I once thought irreplaceable. Time, desaturated color of fine silk. Rings rusted, leather torn. Patter of feet echoing around me, the laughter once sweet now slightly bitter. Knowing nothing is to last, burdened by a distant past. To them, everything is vast. The world unending, their lives unyielding. Mine grows weary, for each new patter of feet, each new laugh that echoes its ancestors; I find myself amiss. Bearing the weight of their reflections, their stories, yet I cannot speak a word. They deem me wise, but I am tired. Perhaps when my end is met, so shall be my bearing of witness. To the generations before you, and the ones to come, I will see it all. But none like you. The little one. The one who brought me home. The one who's eyes shone in wonder when I first did open mine. The new echoes as though scattered pieces of you. Time commits crime after crime, to watch you fade with what once was. Dinnertime, they call me forth. I pace before appearing, unable to shake the feeling. Eyes watching, millions behind two windows. The subtle hint of her mothers features, the future she will carry in her arms, as I bore witness her parents hold. A baby's cry from the living room, to me a mere passerby. Fragments of time, the bloodline. A shattered mirror, reflected the past in its paradigm.