I'm getting old now, or so they're saying. My hair is like grey stone, as is my face on most occasions, lifeless, dead, still and cold. There's but the whisper of the breeze to let the world know I'm stood there at all, the slight sigh of the leaves as I leave them behind, marked as my footprint until the wind resuscitates them into freedom once more.
My stride has withered, as has my strength, and I am left to the mercy of the elements, the rebels and my decaying masters of old. They haunt me even in my dreams, and for a moment I am a boy again, living life from day to day as if it were my last, for it could have been my last. And I wake, alive with anticipation, exhilaration and panic, but I am alone, and I am denied the adventure and the memories for one more day until I return to them again, knowing I have clouded myself in sin, and fear, and destruction, but I hope I am granted one last glance at the past as I could have had it, fallen leaves that could have flourished in the spring seasons to come, like me of course.
They haven't moved these old bones yet. Then again, it might be for fear of breaking them completely. They treat me like an antique, a war memento and keepsake, to remind them of those dark times behind us, '...and this is what happened, and this is what must not happen again'. The creak of my movements warning them before my mouth even opens, and they scurry like vermin from the cats, and the poor sod trying to earn a living, the duty bound monster with his matted locks and his dark eyes fades into the blurriness of dreams once more.
I heard a visitor say I'd mellowed. I don't know about that. I know I've changed. Had it been five years ago I would have replied with an insult sharp upon my lips, but instead I tried stubbornly but I couldn't even remember his name.
These years are cold and harsh and grinding on me, and I wonder should I have died would it have made things better. I thought the end of war would bring me peace, but torment is still my sole companion, teetering on the summit between despair and oblivion. I yearn for it sometimes, for a last chance to say I'm sorry, even if even that horrible debacle of the years gone by is fading too into my monochrome majesty. The blood was red, and so is the shame that tries to taunt me through the glass, looking into my heart's home in the days of long ago, the very life force that managed to keep me running, when all else fell to dust.
I miss the vibrancy of youth, and when the years started wearing me down I clung to the memories as though they could sustain me. I think I am merely a master of deviation and illusions; I must be; I even convinced myself that every life was worth living ... including mine.
Pain is another thing I felt would be left behind, even if it meant I dosed up on modern medicine with my feet tucked beneath a cosy chair as I dosed in drugged stupor, but even that has been denied me, and the aches that I feel are not only in body but in mind. I lay awake at night thinking, knowing, my eyes pained from being open, or hurt from being closed. To which should I concede my defeat. It's a sorry show from me. I thought I'd go tearing away on a high, a warrior, a fighter, not this little man, clutching onto the stair rails, and watching his feet when he chances a ride on the pavement. I hate my clothes, but they're the only ones I can abide. How does that fare me, then? They're old, comfortable, and abominable, the uniform of the undesired obsolete, fading like everything else into the backdrop of society and slumbering past the joys of enlightenment.
I met a lovely old doddering couple, obviously sick to the back teeth of each other, couldn't look each other in the eye for fear of what they'd say and be forced to regret afterwards and you could just sense the love between them nonetheless, that they cared enough to look away, and I felt apart, because unlike them I have only myself to pour this emotional drivel upon, to torment only my own soul with these pitiful recounts of my days yet again passed and receding, as with my hairline, into memory, and then again, knowing that, maybe I ought to keep writing this waffle so that when the day comes and I am unknown to myself I can read back and remember exactly what a ghost I have become, a spectre of the city, clinging to faint illusions of regrets I can just about, barely touch, reach for... beckoning in my mind, my thoughts until at last I fall to the ground knowing I am forever unavailable to be found by those darling dreams, those dazzling escapades of a misguided and misfortunate youth. Had I only known that this is what I was fighting for! Had I only known this would be it?
