Aging
Published: November 14, 2008Section: Arts, Etc.
The summer was drawing to an end
and she was finding it hard to say farewell to the long days and warm air.
Soon she would be bundled up in a jacket and mittens,
the nights would be longer and colder.
Each day she would have to rise to a dark sky.
But for now she held on to the soft wind caressing her hair…
“I will love you forever,” she whispered into the dark.
An eager ear beside her shot back an assured “Forever and always.”
What had happened to that vow?
The years had become shorter
The moments of wonderment had came less frequently
Agile legs had weakened and then become useless
Then suddenly the term young was something used to describe them
“Who have I become?” she asked her wrinkled fingers.
They had once griped a steady young hand, triumphantly shouting
“One, Two, Three, JUMP!”
But now her wrinkled skin hung like an oversized dress on her knobby bones.
Turning her hands over she saw the snake like vanes that rested just beneath a paper-thin covering
Standing in the cold
Two strong arms wrapped around her proud shoulders
“You are the only woman I have ever loved,” The arms assured her
The words that had made her stop shivering
But now the words were a forgotten dream and the arms no longer snaked around her shrunken shoulders.
Looking once again at her weathered hands
she recalled the orcid they had placed
on the soft wet grass in front of a hard garnet barrier.
That’s what the grave was,
a barrier between her love and her life,
a barrier between her young eager self and the aching body she now inhabited.
Her eyes slipped closed and she listened
but he did not say anything more…
Only the sound of autumn echoed back through her memory.