katherine upton ageing well.

it just happens. a bit of acceptance on the way things are, the game becoming clearer and the lack of interest to keep playing it. the weight in the mid-section, spots on the skin, sleep coming at all times and a memory not as sharp as it once was. meals that seem never ending, unread books unfinished movies, rolodexes that sit on the side and gather dust. spots on you favorite shirts, nails needing to be trimmed. you look at the kids playing and understand the games but not quite the lingo or the rules. the inner voice keeps speaking, but the outer one begins to speak less.

it will end. pretending that the picture is better then it is will not change that. our legacy is only what others infer it to be, if they spend time thinking of us at all. the living and the dead are the same, our lives happen in small circles and circumstances, the noise and strangers matter little to us and the effect that they have on us are minimal if any at all. only our minds keeping score of whether or not we have lived our life to the fullest and to decide if it was a success or a failure, a black-eye or a feather in the cap.

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christmas. gifts changing hands, families together and food and music in all rooms. we have so much stuff, wrapped in colorful papers and handed back and forth with good motives and joy. we clean up the boxes and wrappings with the same gusto that we used to open them. a dizzy display of commercialism and celebration marked only by a date in the calendar. our stomachs overly filled, but still a hunger for the meaning of it.

on the radio songs of a baby born many centuries ago, who arrived so that we could all be forgiven for the sins that we commit. when that baby grew up, he  would later be nailed to a cross and left in the sun to die. gods only son, brought into this earth and forced to be born in a manger and ridiculed and left to die on the cross. as we eat away at the tree of knowledge, gorge ourselves with multiple variations of content, i wonder aloud…what have we done and what will be done unto us?