Dear Children

Dear children

Your job is to keep me young

Please do everything possible to make it so

Keep snapchatting pictures of your new nail color and turning me on to new fandoms

Keep sharing 90s indie rock and facetiming with me

Above all

Keep humoring me

Even if I am forty years older than you

I like feeling cool even though I probably am not

It’s nice to appear hip to other moms

Who don’t have a clue about instagram

Or to become the Iphone maven to old flip phone users

I rather like it when my fellow 20-something tutors

Say I never to cease to amaze them when I share that

I’m done with neon pink hair extensions

So passé

So even when I am a really old lady

Grey and decrepit

To the degree that I am able

Please make sure to keep me young

Whatever that may look like

I don’t have a clue

I am not there yet but I will be

Inevitability steps in

Like it or not

And if my memory fails me

Please tell the world that you know I remain young in my heart and soul

And when I am gone

Please tell everyone how I stayed young because of you

©kcasady2014

White Hair

The departed spends her first night in her grave 

Tucked in by relatives and friends

Each tossing three shovelfuls of dirt upon her coffin

A gesture of pure kindness

One for which there can be no repayment 

While the white hairs stood and watched 

Too old to lift even the tiniest bits of soil

Imagining their dead compatriot listening from within her eternal cocoon 

Watching for her hovering soul

Waiting for it to fly free

All the while counting the moments till their turn

Wondering by whose hands their graves will be filled

©kcasady2024

Null and Void

Perhaps I'm inured to it

Seasoned

A little bit too familiar

The old ones keep dying

Been through it before

Sadly

Knowing what to expect

The comments about long life

The brave remarks about the death

The requisite love and adoration

The war stories of caring for the old and frail

But past the cynicism 

Underneath 

Not too far below the surface

Exists a sense of wistfulness

Of longing to go back

To when the old ones were in their prime

When they buffered us 

The next generation

When their homespun faces dotted holiday dinners

The young ones assured of no change

Certain of continuity and always

Only a single old one still lives

For her

At 97 continuity disconnects and always becomes never

Time scampers quickly

Exhibiting an agility no one can stop

We younger ones step up

Reluctantly dotting funeral tables

with our taut faces

As we shield the next ones

Taking our turn

Walking involuntarily toward null and void

©kcasady2014