Fragility

Fragility is a hard pill to swallow.

We are all just quivering piles of bones and flesh,

Countdown clocks,

Waiting.

Mortality is morbid,

So we chase childhood,

Fake immortality, hoping one day immortal we will become.

We cling to our youth; we cling to the past.

Fragility is our defining characteristic.

We are a vulnerable species, vulnerable to daggers and knives,

To guns and grenades,

To pills and peer pressure,

To axes and alcohol,

To crossbows and cancer,

To snakes and stereotypes,

To ourselves and everyone else,

And we spend our whole lives running, clinging on to fragility’s foil.

At some point, we realize the flight is futile.

We can’t control this, can’t medicate it, bandage it, erase it, cover it up.

The truth, not you or I, is absolute.

And now, we have only one choice:

We vow to live alive, not passive, not unhappy.

We accept our limits, but live as if we have none, as if we are untethered.

We remember that we are all quivering piles of bones and flesh,

Countdown clocks,

Waiting.

And while we relentlessly seek cures to vulnerability, cures to fragility,

I cling to mine so closely,

A reminder that time is finite, and so am I.

Time is fleeting, and so am I.