Miss Havisham has nothing on my decay I’ve lived a thousand years in this state In stasis my hair tarnishes grey As the eyes behind which I deteriorate I’ve been trapped by my old ways Habits die hard and the twists of fate Have deserted me to go and play With other mortals who don’t retaliate
In frosted silks and velvet capes Spiderwebs frame my wrinkling face And beside me all laid with lace The remnants of my life wither away With a forlorn smile I greet the day The visits lessen as I fall ever more prey To isolation and the soft sway Of my mind as it disintegrates
You smile politely and start to say You had heard I was once rendered great And good but I am no saint I am nobody to emulate I am frozen as a winter’s day Stiff and still and never to change My dusty breath will suffocate And I beg you to turn away
Leave me in this slumbering daze A relic of another age Long-passed and tinged with grey A memory inarticulate I tired of life one summer’s day It grew bored of me too in its way Left me immortal and unchanged Its cruelty can never be replaced.
The idea of this came from Great Expectations, of course, but also from the persistent feeling I am frozen in time.