Body wearing down, arthritis setting in, joints and muscles straining.
Balance out of whack, muscles weakening, wrinkling.
Skin screwed, wrinkles and ugly aging spots everywhere.
If you’re lucky, you’ll still have your hair and your teeth.
Senior discounts only serve to validate what may not be clear to you.
Sleep, waking in the night, risks of falls if meandering to the bathroom.
Blood tests show many problems; a godawful cancer might be one of them.
Examined and poked by gerontologists like a nonentity lab specimen.
More doctors than ever, appointment after appointment after appointment.
The memory firing on only five cylinders, days of senior moments, maybe dementia.
The voice sounds weak or hoarse unless you’re lucky or genetically blessed.
Once youthful looks, often pretty, now lost; new roles as nondescript grannies.
Once handsome young men, now like Paradise Lost, looks gone forever.
Friends and generational icons dying, depressing reminders that nothing lasts.
You wonder when you’ll be next, your immortality forsaken, your mortality waning.
If unbearably sick, or in unbearable pain, or dying in a nursing home…
You might pray you are next.

Bob Boyd