Where do they find their solace when time takes toll? 

 Choices that is. You know, when a fur coat seems better than a wind-breaking 
piece of plastic in a shop where the browned decay of the sales lady’s teeth 
hint at the bad breadth of its shoulders, and the colours seem off, but you’re 
worried about the environment, so you lean towards it and away from dead animals. 

 Where do they find their stretch when time takes toll? 

 At one point you’ve got many, and at another the page is blank. Even the word
 to start a poem hides behind the distractions of the day, and your choice to watch
 Infinity Wars till 2am, and be up to your employer’s hobby, your livelihood, by 
4am, which meant that your brain factory remained littered with yesterday.

 I’ve noticed how choices impact choices, no troll! 

 It’s like the Mahjong possibility counter, and the kanji sign you just clicked 
to reduce it, or when you go for a piece further off to the left, and the counter
 goes up the sides of your cheeks, like to say you did the right thing by chance
 or by calculated meticulousness. 

 My daughter stares me in the eyes as I get daily old: 

 I answer her that every action from that first cry she made hanging upside
 down with amniotic coat has determined where she stands now, and every
 action she freely wills will determine the amount of freedom she can exercise
 as time takes its course and my hairline reduces my freedom of hair styling. 

 My son stares at my lies, head cocked like “It’s getting old!”: 

 I tell him freedom comes from sacrificing freedom, like Isaac on an altar, or
 Joseph in a well, or me writing this here, or Jesus on a cross, or hitting a campaign 
or running trail, or studying for a test, or digging up fossils, or just helping a 
neighbour: the more of your freedom you forfeit for the right reasons, the more 
you’re ready for the fullness of more freedom to forfeit. 

 (c) nyonglema