This Old Man

This old man is my destiny

His eyes are brown with heartache and his heartbeat tired and frayed.

This old man is my realization

His life has been a series of almost’s and has-been’s and he almost was a has-been.

This old man is my crossed out T and the dotted I

A completed puzzle that he’d like to deny

A spoken word wrapped in a fucking lie

A morning cup of coffee hung out to dry

A fashion out-of-date in a fashionista’s eye

A doctor standing in front of a dead mother’s daughter-

-fighting to find words she’d loaned her life to learn to cure — misguided hope,

donating her emotions out of a jar she carries in her white… coat… pock-et

but silenced due to the consequences she cannot help but put in motion.

This old man is my harmlessness.

My charitable feelings kept on the sidelines…

…now unleashed at the buzzer,

a bit too early for regret. A bit too late for redemption.

This old man was once just my pension plan’s face.

Although one day he did wake up and felt the world was his

That day his child was born. Some decades ago.

This child today stands in front of the dead mother’s daughter wearing her stethoscope

and hides her emotions in her white….coat….pock-et.

This old man is finally an old man grown out of a young man - me.

His morning’s now let him be. His noon’s let him be. The evenings…the night

the courage,

the might,

the hours,

the powers,

the sight,

and the touch of elegance he once showed in reading his morning paper…

now limps in its own pool of thick blood.

The memory of his wife never left him be. They never let him be.

Neither grow, nor heal.

One day he hopes she can guide him to give up on life…

..much like she had. Much like he let her.

Hah…

…this old man is my digression.

My first words after I’ve left the margins of the clean white page

that would’ve made me…immortal.