Old age hit me
like a fist

I was planting roses
carelessly, never anxiously
avoiding their thorns

my teeth were my own,
I could bite into a hard, green
apple easily

there was no consequence,
no fear of an explosion of
false enamel

vegetables grow into
something beautiful over time
if you treat them right.

unlike the shell of a woman
bleached, oversaturated,
badly composed, framed

by misery.

A seventeen year old girl
bending into the hands of
a childlike man

unaware of the flames
she was igniting,
her body slamming
into the kitchen floor

you will cry in the morning,
weep for the innocence
you lost, the shock of
surviving your own
******

unwantedly.

I was thirty before
I tried to disappear
back into the oblivion
of filthy London streets

thirty pills, one for
each year, a litre
of ***** and a
badly written
death note

I survived. Just long
enough to paint a
picture of adulthood

a husband, a wife
a son, a daughter
I was everything
and nothing all
at once

old age hit me
like a fist

a rattle of dust
in an urn
and a hundred of
the flowers I have
always hated

they cry, thinking I am lost,
I smile, knowing that I
was never found