It is beautiful and it is poignant because it is the end of things. The last. The never again. Look closely. Observe. This is a gift for you, this witnessing. When your time has come, your settling into middle age, you will remember and you will understand.
Sad and beautiful, this decline. This small rise, like a hanged man kicking his foot, desperate to be reunited with the heart of his life. The beginning of things in so many ways. A new life. A new wise life. I want to calmly let go of my wild youth, but I find I am kicking, weeping, beating my chest and tearing at my hair. This walk towards oblivion. This slow tedious march rent with jealousies and regrets. Brave face for the world.
Give me this one dignity. Give me this Swan Song. The best song. My voice raised now in perfect pitch, a climax that makes my hands shake as they have never done. My skin a crescendo and the shriek of joy and terror racing though it. No easing off into old age for me. I leave in a blaze of pleasure, as I have lived only more intense now that I face the end of it down.
You offer me a place amongst the crowd. You offer me the same thing that others take from you, a print of myself, endlessly repeated till the ink runs thin during one or the other of us. Sometimes I don't mind. I am singing and it is pure and wonderful, my Swan Song. And then, surprisingly, sometimes I do.
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