Empty Nest: raw poem (you can never and completely understand)

In hotel room bed ten feet from me
but well out of reach
the boy sleeps
fitfully
heady with things I know so
well
things I can never
know
pain i have lived
and can't see,
pain
i can
never save him from.

The boy
rolls away
away
his vibrating phone
shaking with the texts
that are ever-present these days

away from where
I sit
sentient
and toward the window
where sunlight filters in.

He yanks at the sheets,
heady with nerves and
sleepy excitement,
with exhaustion and
fear
and the unknown.

I sit in a chair
quiet,
unmoving,
a cup of
lukewarm coffee gripped in my aging hand.

If I don't move maybe I can fool the clock
stop time
hold on just a little more.

After a half-managed breath,
I pick up the laptop
and type
wise to the truth that
I cannot win
I am nothing more than a deer stuck
in
headlights.

I take a sip and type
(what I do, what I do. . . )
trying not to notice my shorts-clad legs jutting from the cold metal,
exposed thighs
bearing skin that betrays me more and more these days.
Time marches
Waits for no one.

The boy sleeps,
but soon he will wake
and I
will
type and type
and
(somehow)
drive away.

The ennui of mediocrity...

me n' my pink hat after a workout recently

I've had some virus for days. It's had me mostly in bed, which depresses me.

I had already been a slacking version of my newish-old former self -- the self of my mid-life crisis who swam no matter what, did the laps whether sleet or rain or flu tried to interfere. Sure, maybe like a crazy person, but like a doer, a shaker, a person who could not endure the ennui of sitting around.

God, I miss her.

She, of course, was in her 40s. This new me? Bah. What a motherfucker.

I'm feeling in quiet crisis mode. Like I can't get myself to move as fast as the commands in my head are telling me to. To rally to get more done in a day than I am doing. Each day I get up; then it's bed time again.

It's not even Facebook/social media that's to blame, to tell you the truth. I don't know what it is. Caring for a mother-in-law in palliative care, maybe, or having a constant stream of visitors, or owning a dog, or getting stuck in the minutiae of copyedits when what i want to do is write a bold new story. . .or maybe this new digestive condition (see, above, "What a motherfucker") that has made me give up my only goddamned vice: a daily cup of coffee.

All I know is, lately, there aren't enough hours in a day and I can't figure out how to stop wasting them.

And it's making me miss the wild and dramatic energy of my midlife crisis I had a few years ago. Sure I was a mess, somewhat miserable, but, MAN, I got things done. I had things to say. I was funny and fascinating (even a little to me). I got a book deal, then a second. I became an open water swimmer, swam a 5K then a 10K.

I WAS DOING THINGS.

And yeah, maybe I'm still doing things, but it all feels slower and more like been there-done that mediocrity.

Well, except for the book I have coming out which I'm sort of hoping is the best thing I've written so far, and, yeah, I'm excited for it, but I don't want to JUST be waiting for that. And, besides, even if it is. Then what?

What if everything scintillating becomes mediocrity once it's achieved?

I've got nothing.

- gae