fish w.w. burton
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

you will never. you will never know the ways in which you were born. you will never live longer than you were hoping to. you will always hope to live longer than you will. your mother is not outgrowing you. you have seven minutes of exquisitely detailed memory, any more and you would fail to be human, any less and you would feel empty in the same way the sky sometimes feels a little sparse, like the time you were walking home from school and you noticed the wrinkles on your hands, you traced them and thought of growing older and this made you feel excited until you thought about beards or boobs or marriage or something to do with words you haven’t fully mastered: concordance, fecal, has been, york.

i am not growing old, you do not grow oldness. you cure with time, peel like bark from the trunk of history. you wash your face in time and it sinks in a bit, you moisturize with moments, but age follows you from a distance, always a distance, knocking at your door, but isn’t there when you answer, digging holes in your flower beds but you can’t quite tell what animal it is, and who keeps leaving this coffee mug on the counter, and why do i keep stepping up one more stair than is in the case, and is it my eyes or does the sunset seem to be smaller.

i am my own man. i overheard a man say this and i knew that he wasn’t. that he wasn’t as filled out as the park downtown, he wasnt as turned over as the field. it wasn’t until i was driving past a burned field of a plant i didn’t know, that i realized i always recognized fire and ash. that when i drive by a blackened field there is no question, no moment of wonder as to what happened. i always ask how when it comes to fire. hiw did the farmer burn his field. hiw did he walk around the smoke. how did he sleep that night. how did his wife wake him, or did she.

)

    fish w.w. burton

    Written by

    i live next to a river. sometimes life keeps me awake. fishburton.com

    Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
    Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
    Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade