mortality and sense of belonging
There are times when I look around me and see youth sparkling in the face of everyone. It is in their bright eyes, their full and round cheeks, hair trailing in the wind and laughter dancing on it. It's in the glow of their skin, their rampant energy, evident even in the way they walk through the square and board the buses. Sometimes I feel my skin glows less and less, the wind doesn't catch me as often and things like riding the bus become ordinary; each day is no longer an adventure.
I look in the mirror and my eyes, my heart seem heavy some days. My legs are weak and tired of carrying me around, my feet ache over the miles they cover, the air in my lungs is not doing its job as well as it might - or my lungs are falling into sleep as my feet do. My head is filled with worry and my pulse speeds with stress; the blood in my veins and arteries becomes brown and aged, even as my heart rejuvenates it. Some unspeakable place inside me is still tender and healing and vulnerable from whatever pains it. It makes me long for things even I don't know. It makes me feel like I no longer belong here, as the faces I see each day become more child-like and impish. Their lines and dimples are road maps for my weary legs, leading me up steep curved cheeks into pools of blue and brown and green, past ridged eyebrows shaded by fringes of golden red hair, suddenly away from wherever I started.
I can look back, but probably shouldn't, as whatever invisible youth I contain claws at what's behind us, panicked, wanting to be in the midst of it all instead of walking away in solemn solitude. The gray mist makes my bones and muscles feel frail with the realization that they, too, will not live forever. My nerves are afraid to initiate each step forward. My hands are secretly reaching for those of others who will never know it, and so will never take them. Each word that slips from my lips is fragile and tentative; my voice breaks too often these days. My fingers are cold and my skin is roomy. I have never thought of my body as a cage, or a chain tethering me to something inescapable, but suddenly it is so, in moments when I feel older than my true age.
I look in the mirror and my eyes, my heart seem heavy some days. My legs are weak and tired of carrying me around, my feet ache over the miles they cover, the air in my lungs is not doing its job as well as it might - or my lungs are falling into sleep as my feet do. My head is filled with worry and my pulse speeds with stress; the blood in my veins and arteries becomes brown and aged, even as my heart rejuvenates it. Some unspeakable place inside me is still tender and healing and vulnerable from whatever pains it. It makes me long for things even I don't know. It makes me feel like I no longer belong here, as the faces I see each day become more child-like and impish. Their lines and dimples are road maps for my weary legs, leading me up steep curved cheeks into pools of blue and brown and green, past ridged eyebrows shaded by fringes of golden red hair, suddenly away from wherever I started.
I can look back, but probably shouldn't, as whatever invisible youth I contain claws at what's behind us, panicked, wanting to be in the midst of it all instead of walking away in solemn solitude. The gray mist makes my bones and muscles feel frail with the realization that they, too, will not live forever. My nerves are afraid to initiate each step forward. My hands are secretly reaching for those of others who will never know it, and so will never take them. Each word that slips from my lips is fragile and tentative; my voice breaks too often these days. My fingers are cold and my skin is roomy. I have never thought of my body as a cage, or a chain tethering me to something inescapable, but suddenly it is so, in moments when I feel older than my true age.