Old woman, you shuffle past the bus stop, coat dragging like the years you’ve worn, eyes clouded, face soft like pages turned a thousand times and almost forgotten.
You walk like you’ve been walking your whole life, through the noise, through the quiet, through the people who left and the ones who never came.
And me?
I just sit here. Watching. Like a ghost who hasn’t even died yet.
Because I don’t think I’ll make it there. To where you are. To where your bones ache but your breath still rises. To where your silence means survival.
I don’t think I’ll ever grow old. Not like you. Not like anyone.
They say ”you’re young, you’ve got time,” but time feels like a hallway I can’t find the end of. Like a clock with no hands, ticking in a room no one else hears.
My days are… blurry.
Tight in the chest. Heavy in the head. Like I’m dragging a life behind me that I never asked for. Like I’m underwater but smiling at everyone above the surface so they won’t ask if I’m drowning.
Old woman, how did you do it? How did you live long enough to forget some of the pain? To bury people, and still get up to buy bread and feed birds and water plants that will outlive you?
I can’t even imagine next week. Let alone next decade. Let alone wrinkles and soft sweaters and stories that begin with ”When I was your age..”
I’m scared that I won’t get that far. And part of me doesn’t care.
Is that awful?
Some days I hope I disappear quietly. Without the drama. Without the note. Just.. a light going out that no one noticed was flickering.
But you, you’re still here. And I don’t know if that’s strength or just what happens when you forget how to quit.
Old woman, you’re not my grandmother. You’re not anyone I know. But watching you makes me ache for a future I don’t believe belongs to me.
I don’t want pity. I don’t want advice. I want to feel something that tells me I might still be becoming instead of slowly unraveling.
So I sit here. And I watch you. And for a moment, just a moment I imagine that maybe somehow I’ll last long enough to forget how much this hurts.
That maybe one day, someone will watch me, and wonder how I made it.
23:20pm / Took a walk today and heard a busker singing Old Man by Neil Young. I watched people pass by, and a poem quietly found me