The Gift

 As I sit still in my home, every ounce of my body feels the weight of my transgressions, the toils of my traumas, the burdens of my past and the abdication of squandered hope.  

My body creaks like seized rusty rivets on an aged naval hull. My mind, and what remains of it, gloats on about an earlier version of itself….sharp, intelligent and curious…those characteristics long departed with my discarded neurons like the gift wrapping of a present, its loss a talisman of the loneliness I feel, the empty presence I have to unwrap daily.

For I walk alone. Not by choice, but by circumstance…alas, by my decisions… and seemingly the belief that I was worth saving by someone. I fought a good fight in so many different arenas so many different battlefields so many different conflicts. The scars and sacrifices are real, But no one gazes upon them any longer. I’m too old to be someone’s hero, anyone’s prize.

Nothing more than a living shelf to store my medals…

I remain a soldier without a soul. Nothing left but the memories, of what I used to know who I used to be. 

And the realization that this battlefield is one only strangers will be visiting, Marveling over what transpired, one day, in history. Commemorating what was love and loss…..

While I watch peacefully from the canopies nearby, in silence, my only respite…