It Comes For Me

I hear its heavy lumbering in the distance, stopping and starting with grunts and spews of exhaust.  The sounds tell me to brace for the last assault as it moves ever closer to where I lay.

True, my days are over.  Used and discarded like the rest of my world, I am not my former self but instead a empty suitcase of what is left of my life.  As all things, I was needed once, new and inviting… I was eagerly held in loving experienced hands.  It was a perfect combination of necessity and want of what we all want… to be needed.

I tried oh I tried to hang on by being useful with an intrinsic purpose, but new was what was desired most and who among us cannot age?  The spark of life slows eventually through marching time and use.

Closer it comes, revving its massive engine with animal roars of determination.  There is no stopping it now. 

We mass together in the autumn breeze, trembling.  There is a strange comfort in our shared fate. All of us had different reasons for being, but today we know our ending will be the same.  It doesn’t matter if we were once the shining star of a party, a missive of smart information, still serviceable to someone or the evening dessert of a lusty mouth --- we are all used up and spent.

If only I could have hung on a little longer, polishing myself to remain inviting, but there was no way.  We all have to go sometime.  Delay just postpones the worry of when.  Who wants constant thoughts of when will I be tossed aside like those before me… thrown away for the next play-pretty?  Better now than when I’m so battered I won’t know which end is up!

Some do stay in the game longer with a nip and a tuck, a generous oiling or a refurbishing of the façade.  You would agree with me if you were me.  We both would embrace it together, I know we would.

Am I not like all others?  We all have our pride, but when it comes for you, you will be ready just as I am even now in my morning hour of panic.  I know it is time to go without a fight.

The sound is deafening now!

It will next stop for me --- all of us uselessly huddled together --- and I will go like the others who went before me and after me to the unknown place, forever and ever.  Amen.

It’s trash day.