Half my half-lived life is over.
Neatly quartered I can see
segments once fresh now hung to dry.
Each season seasoned in its own unique way.

The first course: hungry and ready for anything served.
A time of "Yes!" to life because life was new
and new is beautiful, sometimes,
and even the ugly experiences could be swallowed
and saved


And then a time of No. Of short, fruitless, pimpled Nos, dropped into a swirling of dreams that I knew would come true.

And then a time of Me, sprinkled with the start of questions, and so much hard work in search of the answers.

And then more Me with the questions obliterated, drowned, soothed to sleep.

At forty I awoke. Why do they say forty is the new twenty? Forty is when the questions receive their answers, and they are not pleasant answers.

Yes doesn't always work.
No doesn't either.
Dreams don't come true.
All the things I thought important aren't.
All the people I clung to let go.
All the necessity and intensity gone flaccid.
Everything I thought mattered, didn't matter at all.

Now I wait, downhill ahead, and hope that I will reach a place where I will find that it doesn't matter that everything I thought mattered, didn't matter at all.

I think this will mean growing up. And just as I figure it out, it will be time to die. Some people say when you die, you become either matter or energy. I wonder which I will be.