For Me

He always was supposed to love her shadow.

One day

     we will shrivel up and become old. 

      Our spines will curve.

Our hips will ache. 

       We will need canes. 

We will have to squint to read things. 

One day 

   it will be hard to hear. 

         And we will probably smell funky to the young people. 

One day 

   our skin will sag,

   and the bags under our eyes will be so sunken in;

        they won’t even believe us when we tell them we used to be young and beautiful.

One day 

    this world will feel very strange to us.

        Tech will change everything

            and we will be left in the dust,

             soon to become dust.

               Hardly anyone—except maybe a few grandkids—will respect us.

One day,

  the planet will be poisoned.

      People will starve.

        Wars will rage.

Everything will change.

          And everything will stay the same.

            Our brains will rot in front of the perfect entertainment, 

and many will be content 

     as the world burns around them.

One day

     we will look back on our life with regrets.

It’s true.

    I bet everyone does.

Don’t act like you won’t escape this fate . . .

       And when we look back at our regrets,

what will we see?

    What will we wish we would’ve done differently?

For me,

   I think it will be,

I was always supposed to love all of her with everything in me. And I didn’t.

CH 9/10/26