At times I wonder the words they murmured

The afternoon haze cast itself a brilliant illumination across the prairie.
Taking steps forward,
Backward
seeking. They were hesitating,
while the future kept beckoning,
because they wanted no part of it.

"There is Now," Malone's words kept passing through their thoughts,
their inflamed minds that once ignited
would never droop to a smoulder
and the atoms that they would become
had never known another,
and in the span of half a century
they finally came together.

A separation so intolerably long would one day
melt
like a frozen finger of ice beneath an afternoon haze.

Until then, they were just holding on.
 Holding on to this moment,

Now

the only moment that had ever - would ever - matter.