Time

The clock ticked. He picked it up and wound it. Tightening the spring so it would count out his life for another day, hours, minutes, seconds. As it unwound, it ticked. His life slowly slipped away, he knew he'd be dead. He sat up in his bed and put his feet on the floor. It was cold. He yawned. His body was warm. The clock ticked, endlessly. Well, as endlessly as he was there to wind it. He reveled in that information. The clock needed him. Did he need the clock? If it stopped, would his heart also stop? Would the slow winding down of the clock mirror the slow decline of his own heart? He tried to wind the clock tighter. It got harder and harder to move the key. Finally, it stopped, it could not be wound any tighter. He pushed it too hard, and the spring snapped. He fell back onto the bed as his heart seized and stopped.

Spring

Spring was definitely here. There was still a slight chill, but all the accouterments of spring had arrived. There was the warm wind which carried the smells of warming earth and blossoming flowers down the hills to the lake which still had a rim of frost around it. The boy and his dog stood on the edge of the lake, looking at the tire swing attached to the gnarled old tree. Soon it would be summer and many hours of of many days would be spent swinging into the lake, engaging in the bonding all boys do, the all-powerful "dare."
"I dare you to do a flip!"
"You're on!"
And if ever a boy chickened out on a dare, he would be teased mercilessly, at least until the next boy failed to live up to his dare. All that was several months away, an eternity it seemed to him. So now he stood by the side of the ice-ringed lake, with snowbells and croucuses beginning their short flowering season, too soon to wilt in the heat that was to come.

Radio waves will continue into space long after we're gone

The faint sounds of a transistor radio could be heard wafting through the empty building. The tinny sounds seeming out of place somehow, almost too boisterous for the silent surroundings. It was a lively swing tune, full of brassy horns and trumpets. A single male voice crooned along, extolling the magnificence of being in love during the spring.
His voice echoed in the empty halls, bouncing around the rooms, devoid of people but not furniture. The old couches and chairs and tables and desks all sat, as they had without occupants for many years, the dust in thick layers on them, and in dancing motes in the sun light that made it in through the dirty windows. The song faded. It was ending. It was soon replaced by another piece, this one much the same, although slower, and with a female singer. She was sultry, smoky, and was probably on the piano as she sang.
He could see her in his mind. She was beautiful. He turned the handle of the faucet and soon the sound of running water echoed in the emptiness as well. He didn't know why he tried to warm it up. There'd not been warm water in this building for years. He splashed his face, the water trickling down his scruffy beard and back into the sink. As he dried his face with the threadbare towel, the song started to change again, but the radio went silent. The whole building went silent. The whole world went silent.

The train

I wrote this on a train in Japan, coming back late at night.

It was dark outside as the train flowed over the tracks, clacking as it went. A man sat in the third car from the front; he was the only passenger. The cityscape flashed through his reflection in the window as he gazed with eyes glazed by tiredness at the pinpoints of light streaking by. The scrolling cityscape slowed and stopped as the train drew to a halt. The doors opened and a single passenger got on. She wasn't particularly beautiful, nor was she ugly. She was the kind of a woman who got prettier the longer you looked at her. Her clothes were nondescript, but there was still something about her. He could not look away and she eventually felt his eyes on her.
Their eyes locked and the train rolled onward into the night, the brightly-lit train car an island in the dark.

Winter

Ahh. The blog. Anyway, I figured I'd bestow upon you another piece of genius. This one was written on the plane returning from Japan.

Snow was falling, like it normally did. It was a good snow, with big puffy flakes that spun lazily down, each a work of art, before being assimilated into the growing mass that began to coat the ground. It was the kind of snow that would make magnificent snowballs or snowmen, depending on your fancy.
The trees around the field had long since been stripped bare of their leaves by the changing of the seasons and the wind. Now, however, there was no wind, giving the whole scene the muteness that only occurs in midwinter. The haybales seemed as sentinels in the field. These had not been sold or used, so now they sat, forlornly, being covered by the snow.
The boy, bundled against the cold, dragged a cord of wood on the sled that was attached to his mittened hand with a vice-like grip on the rope.
It was so quiet the boy swore he could almost hear the snow falling. His face, ruddy from the cold had the expression of a man on a mission. His blue eyes were fixed on a point far off in the distance that only he could see. The bit of downy fuzz on his cheeks and chin was not as warm as he had hoped or claimed it was.
The snow slowly filled in his tracks across the field as it continued to fall.