Yearnings of Youth

 

The rain reminds me of the days of my youth, days of the yore. Young still, at face, but the heart has been tattered by the trials of time. The soft rains sound like a storm on the fragility of my skin. I ran a race legless and loved heartless and now youth has fled, like smoke from a chimney in a crematorium.

I wish for a taste of what it was to be young and foolish. Like a musician fighting to outdo the canary, I know the vanity of these yearnings. Maybe life has been the teacher I missed in my germination. Maybe it will teach me better in death.

They said that indeed youth is wasted on the young and wisdom on the old, and from where I stand, I am a product of the wastage of both, for time is fleeting fast past me, and bless me, wisdom is a distant memory.

I remain the sinner that grace abandoned, and the kind eyes that once looked at me turned maleficent. The yearnings of my youth is to find the love that fled, but I’m a beggar who has ridden the fleeting horse way too many times. I am now bound by vines I cannot see.

My neck is chained to the dog collar of time and is dragged from one end of the tide to the next by the clicking of fate. My child, bless his heart, is on the other side of the sea. Blind him, father, lest he sees the turmoil that I’m burning in day and night.

Have mercy on him, and break his legs, lest he walks into the same traps I did. Cut away his ears lest he listens to the evil that plays a song in my mind. Drive madness in him like a deep stake, lest he thinks he knows like I did only to find out that the world is vast and dark.

If I could get back my youth I’d pray to be a snake, without feet, cursed to crawl in the dusts. I have walked through many sunsets and each left a mark on my skin. I have been blemished by mornings and ruined by the nights I have encountered. I have amassed demons and grace has fled from me.

Memories of my sinful pasts light a fire that sears my insides as I wait for Satan to claim my soul. I wish I was not meek. I wish I was not humble. I wish I had ridden the fires of pride to the end, and then maybe my sentence would not be vain, but it no longer matters who is right or not. The war is long lost.

My youth is wasted, and the days have fallen from the tree of life like abandoned leaves. The roots have withered and the river I had been planted beside dried. I am alone, just as I came. I lived with many, but death courts me alone, like an anointed lover, like a chosen prince.

There is not enough penance to rescue me from the loneliness of this hill. Only fate, but her eyes have long been turned away from me. The music of the canaries are forgotten, and I remember the raspy old man with bleeding lips. I have served my sentence, and I pray for youth. Wisdom is pure torture to my old soul.