We spend hours days years decades

waiting for our lives

to play out

the way we thought they would

something happens

after fifty before you realize

that whatever it is you dreamed you would

one day become

is already gone.

People that you thought would live on

forever

are gone.

Suddenly with almost no time

passing you are old your parents

are dead your feet hurt and your windowsills

are lined with pill bottles

your daughter is grown and flown

far away from you miles away

you imagine someone taking their last

ineffectual breath and passing from

this world into a world they never thought they’d be.

Things that you thought would always remain

undone.