After years on this earth, I have weathered and grown.
As a child, I did things, I had joy, love, and goals.
In early summers, my life was a canvas for scar tissue:
hot pebbles burned soft skin into calloused glory,
the sun beat down and leathered my skin,
chlorine and dirt turned my young hair to gray.

When I was young, I etched tunnels in my bones,
with crayon and marker, I forged deep ivory valleys.
Some see this as cruelty, a sad deterioration,
but this atrophy is experience, the catalyst of life!

Years later, I sit here next to a painted sunrise.
With jell-o, gray matter rots on my styrofoam tray.
I wish for the summer, hot pebbles, and crayons,
for the laughter of youth and its calloused adventures.

But I've retired, so I sit idly in this plastic wheeled chair,
watching monitors beeping with ebbing heart lines,
grieving for my gray hair as it turns back to brown,
mourning, as my unused bones fill with marrow to the brim,
watching, heartbroken, old age clutching my hand,
as my wrinkled skin smooths away.