My hand now ripe with age reaches out to you

Your mystery

Your pull

The curious mind I have always had lures me

Into your hidden glow

Tormenting me with the faint conversations

From alternate universes

Smacking me with an overwhelming sense of grief

 for how things would, could, or should have been. 

All of the missed opportunities.

A soft, knit handkerchief brushes against

My wrinkled fingers

It is covered with the salt from my tears

The tears shed for my caged heart

The pit in my stomach

The anxiety induced by possibilities.

I am suffocated by the smell of musty

Rotting flesh from the corpses of pathways.

Forks in the path that I did not take

Doors that were not opened

The door I cannot open

Frozen in time and place as the Grim

Reaper lengthens his slime trail inching closer.

I wait,

 Stuck with the metallic 

Taste of pennies and sounds of 

Creaking floorboards that shift with the wind

Edging me towards insanity

Time has only made me

Burrow deeper into my mind

Reflecting on the regrets of roads I did not take

Coming to terms with the fast flying bus 

That is mortality

A flower wreath for my burial.

The smell of dirt consumes me 

As I get laid to rest with my 

Compunctions and remorse.