This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Oasis” Down in the Dirt v215 (1/24) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Limits of Imagination the Down in the Dirt January - April 2024 issues collection book		get the 422 page January - April 2024 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Seventy

Susan Eve Haar

    This is what it’s like:
    You look forward to the mornings—not more than three a week—when you allow yourself Advil, slugging back two. It’s now the drug of choice. That and the kind of sleep that leaves you encased in a dream. Or the warmth of another, your sleeping bodies touching, like animals in a burrow, dreaming in a tunnel of sleep. Sumptuous, better than the meals in fancy restaurants you can now afford.
    It is true that these days you can pay for more but desire less. And you miss that, the desire, the wanting that propelled you forward, that gave you no choice. But what was it really, other than a quest for love?
    And then there’s the surprise of the body’s complaint. Even if you’ve cared for it, there is eventually, and eventually is now. You try to remember what it was to wake without pain or at least your body’s reproach. Easing it into the day, making bargains you may or may not keep. Pushing it with exercise, monitoring it for damage. Calibrating the machine in which you live because now you know you’re going to die there. And astonishingly enough, that surprises you.
    It’s another kind of innocence, age. The stone on the beach, licked black by the waves, sleek as a seal. A Montauk daisy in the cracked stair. You see the flower pushing through, and you understand how ephemeral you are in the face of beauty. The daisy will die and resurrect like Christ. But you, you’ll only die once.
    You feel your life, the one that is passing, you don’t know it. You wonder if you’ve lived, though of course, many things have transpired. Were you there? You wonder if you were more than a witness to your own life, part porn movie, part melodrama. And you wonder if memory is more than a lit whisper.
    The body knows, but it’s not talking.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...