What Will I Be

What will I be?
When the flowers of spring shrivel in upon themselves,
Cradling their heads like the sick,
the elderly,
the lost.
Every line of faces I’d once known
withering away to pruning beings,
left in sun too long.
When each ocean has dried up,
leaving nothing but ancient salts,
somber and decayed to debris and dirt.
Every memory I’d once had,
falling from an empty skull
without lips, or ears, or eyes.
As flesh clings to hollow bones rotting beneath the weight of soil,
heavy on such a sunken chest,
carrying those heavy, lonely burdens.
When the smoldering stars extinguish in a flash of smoke and stardust,
and the remnants of every wish on comets
billows down from the sky to my hands.
What will I be?
When fatal disease courses through your worn veins,
and recollections slowly begin to cease
as you sway further and further into blurring lands.
Meanwhile my heart grows heavy with every last breath you take,
every last word you manage,
and every faint beat of your heart becomes
the march of death as it slows,
to lead you where I’ll never reach.
What will I be?
When every single touch,
and smell,
and sight,
and taste,
and sound
of everything I knew,
spills like sands from shattered glass,
never to be forged again to something I could hold.
What will I be?
When everything I know is gone.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2011

Poem

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Brown Avatar
August 4, 2011 at 8:40 AM
Congratulations on your poetry making it through round one in the PoetrySoup International Poetry contest. I wish you the best in the final round Kendall. Love, Carol
Spence Avatar
August 4, 2011 at 2:44 PM
Thank you very, very much! I greatly appreciate it!
Brown Avatar
June 23, 2011 at 7:29 AM
Congratulations on your well deserved poetry being featured this week Kendall. Love, Carol
Spence Avatar
June 23, 2011 at 6:56 PM
Thank you so much!
Noo Avatar
June 21, 2011 at 11:39 AM
A fantastic poem - one of my favourite so far!
Spence Avatar
June 21, 2011 at 11:52 AM
Thank you so much!
Ujunwa Avatar
June 20, 2011 at 12:27 PM
old age shouldnt be scary, its just another stage of the life's journey. u communicated it alright. ujunwa
Spence Avatar
June 20, 2011 at 8:03 PM
Thank you for the comment, I really appreciate it : ) While I understand how this could be interpreted as a fear of growing old, I didn't really have that in mind while writing it. It's about losing everything that made you, you, and questioning what will happen to yourself when everything that made you is gone; when you forget, when people you know pass away, ect. As much as it is about life, it's really questioning death. It's a much more self-centered view: What about me?
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