"That I'm old enough to have a midlife crisis," he said, with a wry smile. "Is giving me a midlife crisis."
The woman furrowed her brow. "Think of that yourself?"
"I did."
She conceded, with a nod, "Not bad,.
The man shrugged. "Pretty sure my dad had one. Not sure what they called it back then. Got into his late forties and just...changed. Family took a backseat. Even as a kid, I could see he was having an affair or something. Always at the golf course, supposedly. Came home showered a lot." The man took a drink from his beer. "It was like all the pressure that had been on him all his life finally got to him. Pressure to be a doctor. Pressure to be a husband. Pressure to be a father."
"I'm sure it wasn't easy."
"Don't let him off the hook."
"I'm not," the woman said. "It's just not easy getting older,"
"No, it's not. But it's better than the alternative."
The woman sighed. "God, I hate that trope."
"Age is just a number," she said.
"I hate that trope."
"Touche."
"The wife says it a lot."
"It's the truth," the woman said. "Think she really believes it?"
He straightened up for a moment. "That's a good question. I know she definitely wants to believe it. But I think she does believe it, too."
"It's not something people of a certain age like to talk about."
"Maybe men and women just talk about it in different ways."
"I don't think so."
"I do."
"How so?"
"Men like to reminisce," he said. "About the things they did when they were young. Off-roading in your parents Mercedes, getting blitzed at a college party, still trying to piece together what might've happened, donut fights speeding around town on your mopeds." He looked at the woman. "Reminiscing, reliving past semi-glory is kind of a guy way of dealing with age. The idea that they could still go out and do those crazy things..."
"Flirting with the hot young waitress?"
"No," he said. "I tink that a women's thing. Not that you ladies are all trying to rbing home that young buck. But more that, if you wanted to, you could."
"You have us all figured out," the woman said.
"No," he said. "Just women of a certain age."
She smirked. "Not the young ones?"
"Oh, they're a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an puzzle."
The woman slow-clapped her hands. "Well done, well done. Quoting Churchill."
They tapped their glasses, and took a drink. When both were done, the woman said, "Enigma."
"What?"
"Inside an enigma," she said. "That's the quote."
​The man shook his head. "Yeah, you are persickety."

​She lives her life like a stained glass vignette. In a country cottage, pouring red from a crystal carafe. Legs crossed on a wicker patio chair, looking out at fields of green stretching from doorstep to hilltop. We know each other, still she says we’ve never met. As her life passes by. Open the fence gate, my lady. Invite me in. Open your cotton sleeved arms, my lady. Invite me in. So I can open your heart... So I can open your heart...

See the battle scars of life, not on my sleeve, but speading from my eyes, like veins of a leaf. With a voice wrecked and hoarse, I call out her name, she turns to look back, but doesn't do the same. I wipe through layers of grit on my sandpaper forehead, over there a man drops to the broken pavement and is left for dead. I carry suffering and loss, success and failure on my sloping shoulders. Young fillies pass by me hardly a glance for my sins, as if I were a halted breath lost in savage winds. Bodega merchants take my money, returning change with a nod of respect, while the resident regulars turn up their noses and sniff. The city neighborhood is alive with people on the verge of death. Metaphorically speaking, of course. These are the up-and-comers, the soon-to-be movers-and-shakers, the hyphenated privileged retreating to their condos just far enough from the maddening crowd that an ocassional car engine passing below is the most intrusion they'll deal with behind their locked steel doors. Tear these weathered and faded threads from off my back, let the poison rain wash off the wretched stank. 

Even a stallion knows. The impossibly muscled frame eventually pulls back from a sprint. To a gallop. Nostrils flaring wide, like the exhuast on a dragster engine rumbling, shaking, spitting out exhaust. Head snapping one way, then the other, then raised high. The stallion stops and waits for only you. Majestic. Regal. Powerful. Long legs kicking at the earth, as if to make its physical and metaphorical stand. You climb onto the stallion. Feel the power. Become the power. Ride the stallion, confident and caustic, out to the battlefield. Raise your gaze; lift your head high. Charge into the unknown with belligerent assurance that victory is but on the other side. Live your life as the stallion does. With controlled violent abandon. With a fierceness that mocks mere mortals, and leaves them in its wake.

He put his hand on her knee.
She looked down at his hand, then gave him an interested look.
"I'd like to take you home," he said.
"Oh, you would?" she demurred.
"Yes," he said. "Very much so."
He leaned in slightly and stared into her eyes. For a few moments, she did not say anything. His hand moved fractionally up her thigh. She breathed in. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her fingers taps on he wine glass stem.
"I, uh..." she started, then took in a deep breath. "You sure are a confident one," she said, in a low voice.
"I'm one to know what I like," he said. "What I want. His hand became heavier on her thigh."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"And I'm the one you want tonight?" she said.
"You are," he said, nearly before she finished asking.
"I think I'd like that," she said.
Those words never got dull. He gave her his best devilish grin. He squeezed her leg.
She placed her hand over his. And interwined their fingers.

The woman suddenly turned towards him. "Did I just see you yawn?"
"No, no..." He swallowed back a follow-up.
"You did yawn," she said.
He gestured towards her nearly empty wine glass. "I think the Pinot has clouded your perception."
"I don't think so," she said. "I hope my company isn't boring you."
"Hardly," he said. "Especially with a woman as engaging as you." He looked deep into her eyes to make the point. "You're one of a kind. A guy can never be bored of that."
She had seen that kind of look before. Like she was the only woman in the room. She half-smiled. "I'm going to get another glass," she said. "Let me get you another beer."
"And you may," he said, finishing the rest of the bottle in front of him.
The barmaid was especially efficient in bringing their order. The man held up his beer and the woman tapped it with her titlted wine glass. Then she took a sip.
"But you did yawn, didn't you?" she said.
The man took a gulp of his beer, and said, "Oh, yeah."
"Long week?"
​"They're all long."

Dawn's afraid. The sun won't rise. Let there be dark. Hide the pain, Hide the hate. Disease, death, despondent. The night remains. Never ends. Delights in death, disease. Retching in the shadows. Cower in the storm. Shiver in the bloodshot rain. Selfish wonder, wake no more. Wake no more! What have we done? Why did we let go? Stare towards the horizon. It's no longer there. Feed the flames. Taste the heat. Smell the blood. Pour the stink of death. Lick the pustules. Wake no more. Wake no more! Kill the enemy. Kill the rest. Kill hope. Raise the dead. Wake no more. Wake no more! Dawn won't return. The sun departs. Hide in the dark. Wake no more!

I heard that you're leaving. Leaving soon. But I can't go. I'll give my love to show. What's the rush? When's your departure? Why don't you look me in the eye? Something's not right, I'm sure. Hold my heart. Hold my mind. Lift me from the ground. Carry my love around. But the glass vase breaks. It's sat the on the shelf too long. It moved from the tremors. Someting was always wrong. We hide our emotions like the cracks From life shaking. Until I cried out loud. Bursting with pain I'm not faking. It's too to put the pieces together. it's too late to stop the tears. We played out little games. We let the months pass, and the years. So now that you're leaving soon. You've been gone already. You've been a shadow of the moon. And I've been searching. And watching. Was it all just a dream? I should've held myself to the ground.

Let's take a trip together. Far and deep into the dark space. Let's ride to Mars and the moon. And then travel back but never too soon. Let's dive down into the ocean. Beyond where the sun don't shine. We'll hold onto each other. And be the other's lifeline. Let's walk softly in a meadow. And learn each other's thoughts. Let's fly high, drifting on the torrents of wind to faraway towns. Let's be together for all of time. Until the sun lifts no more. Until the oceans run dry. Until the gods have their way. And plan for a final day. Let me be your lifeline when the pain hurts too bad. When the loss is too great to understand. Our love will survive beyond the end of space, past the end of time, ethereal and energy, life is our love. You are here now. With me.

If you've been alive for any period of time, and accumulated any decent number of connections with family, friends, and community, you will have to deal with death. That, as they say, is part of living, or at least, being alive. It sort of reminds me of the old trope -- that I've been hearing a lot lately -- that goes something like, Don't complain about getting old, it's better than the alternative. And while I appreciate the sincerity of the sentiment, for me, it is not particularly comforting. I do not like the concept of getting older. I don't like spending time thinking about the various maladies that might soon begin to affect me. I don't like that I am noticably slower and less athletic than I was, say, fifteen years ago. I don't like the idea that references that I make to my childhood (sports, TV, music, entertainment) in the 1970s sounds like ancient history. My God, the three biggest technological advances of my youth that affected everyday living were: Cable TV available in our neighborhood in the late 1970s, the availability of 'call waiting' on your home phone in the early 1980s, and the creation of MTv in 1981. This was long before the proliferation of computers at home, and cellular telephones, etc., etc. But I digress. I don't like people I know dying. I've lost my mom, all my grandparents, aunts, uncles, two beautiful dogs, and close friends, and, soon, my father. I don't want to lose anyone else. Which, I know, makes me sound childish. But I don't care. I've had enough of death. And it's only getting started.