Just before the floating

"It's all downhill from here," she said,
and though she meant that in a good way,
a sliding into home base sort of way,
a you're-on-the-home-stretch way,
what I heard --
my attitude being what it is these days,
coloring everything
like the brush of some demonic painter,
in shades of dark and gloom --
what I heard, and saw, and felt, was this:

that the rest of this time,
however long it lasts,
will be some unavoidable downhill slide,
a gravitational pull,
a sinking into the muddy edge of nothingness...

I can't seem to remember
that the mud comes just before the floating,
that thing we were born to do.




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