The routines come.

But they come silently,
and they slither,
and they crawl,
and they sneak into our lives
one inch at a time,
hiding in those missing minutes and seconds,
hidden in hours and days lost to the hubris
of our own sense of youth and permanence.

And all the time we've wasted is held so high,
high up above our heads,
just out of our reach,
just a whisper of familiar texture on our fingertips,
as we dance upon our tippy toes,
as our arms slowly tire
of trying to reach what we once held so easily,
as we look back on the shadows
stretched out behind us
overtop of our ever-lengthening timelines,
and we realize that time is indeed passing
and that the golden memories are just that,
memories,
and these stolid routines that we never noticed
aren't making any new ones.

The routines will come,
but ****** be if I'm going to sit idly by
and let them willingly take me.