Horrible Harvest

Aging is a fucking cancer. The wrinkles. The aches. Can’t piss but a trickle – It eats away at you, getting old. Gobbles up every last bit of you – Even the thing that makes us who we are, our memories.

Setting by the fire on the river’s edge, watching Allison curl up and find a peaceful sleep under the thick black sky of the Lowcountry, it come to me that she’s the only one I’d ever told my stories to. I didn’t have no illusions that they meant a goddamn thing to her. I was an old man going on a rant and ramble about the shit and Shinola that made up my life, but the thing of it was that I wasn’t just telling them to her. I was passing them on to her. I was sticking them in that brain of hers, so maybe there’d be a day, where she’d catch a whiff of something that triggers a memory of one of my stories or see an article in the newspaper that reminds her of one of my tales, and she’d feel the need to pass them on to someone else. I didn’t have no desire to be remembered, but for whatever reason, I found myself wanting to find purchase in the fantasies and fairytales folks ruminate on when they dive deep into their own minds to escape the boredom and misery of their own lives. For reasons that don’t make sense, a thing like that made me feel less lonely, and lonely I was.

I missed my life entire once Kenneth was took from me. I didn’t pay a lick of attention to the things I done, the days that went by, the years that disappeared. There wasn’t reason to. I can recall near every breath I’ve ever taken, but I don’t remember being there when I took them. I know that don’t make sense, but I remember the things I done and said, but I don’t recall being there when I said and done them. I turnt to spread out my bedroll when one of those memories time had come to chew on found its way into my mind’s eye.