He rolled up his sleeves and sighed before dusting off his old machine. The worn chair he sat on was rickety, just like his old bones. He fumbled with the paper from his drawer. He chuckled to himself. It’s crazy to think that even decades out of practice, his mind goes back to his old habits. Maybe that’s his mind’s way of saying that he was back home after a long journey of unfulfilled expectations and shortcomings that life always seemed to offer. But no, this? This must be his calling. He agreed with his mind as he hesitated to type the first words on his paper.
His mind drew blank— that wasn’t an old habit. Maybe it meant something, he wondered. He thought again, but the words that popped into his head were clear enough. So, he glided his calloused fingers on thirteen keys— the thirteen keys that crushed his spirit.
“It’s too late,” the paper read. He sighed, scooted out of his chair, and huffed as he ripped the paper out of his old machine.
His mind was swirling with regrets and mistakes, things he could never take back or do-over.
He chose his path— he was already too far down the road to change his ways, he decided.
His calling was shattered.
He had no good things to share, just the same old despair that ebbed in broken pain through his heart. He couldn’t unwind or unbound the mistakes he made.
He couldn’t.
He didn’t.
He walked away from that way, that life— his life’s calling. And as his dragging footsteps droned in a beat, his mind repeated,
“Poems have to be for another day.”
Ded. Growing up
