Trudging

One day you take a look at yourself and wonder how it happened.  And you realize it just did.  Sloth, perhaps, and a certain admixture of fear and desire.  But mostly sloth and the slow, imperceptible movement toward safety. You are not who you thought to become though you are not unrecognizable to yourself.  But you are a distorted version of your youth, the smile slightly twisted, the lines around your eyes speaking of compromise.  

That is unless you were a sellout from the start. Those who aspired to top the mainstream, who had the talent for that, those who did not read too much or believe in the efficacy of certain arts tend to be straighter and clearer.  Protest if you will.  But it is true.  

And if you have fought against that while slouching toward the middle all along, you might be dissatisfied toward the end.  

But there are still dreams on summer nights of ending up romantic, one last hope of moving to Cuba and starting something, of falling in love under tropical stars, the fragrance of frangipani filling the air as you make your way home.  

It is a dream, and they will try to steal that from you, battering you until you are too afraid even to try.  So you work on, retirement your distant dream, hoping that there will be enough, fearing there will not be, thinking you should work harder now having fiddled away your youth, perhaps putting more into your 401K each month, thinking about insurances and hospital plans.