Pretending

Sometimes i have thoughts like these:

for now I can think that I have some strange anonymous importance to every person…but I know one day my skin will sag I will have grandchildren and I will be reduced to being written off by secret narcissists like me. I will be an event one afternoon and people who are free from self-awareness might be haunted by the strange fact that something so seemingly endless as a person can vanish forever from the earth? But I will be gone and there will be green felt on the folding metal chairs. The tent poles have been hammered into the ground for a thousand other dead men like me…it’s a business it’s like a latte…we are a disappearing deceptive triviality passing our days…i can fight it I can deny the sickness when it comes and the fat when it gathers around my midsection my chin when it begins to sag….but I will be just a grandpa a novelty if I’m lucky…I will move to the shoulder while others speed by because the world isn’t mine anymore. One of millions one of millions millions millions who lives and goes away. And the world will not shudder and people will scarcely blink at it…they won’t even blink!
No more lies about me, I will be ashes soon soon I will be forgotten I will breath my last and make room for another to pass his days in turmoil and wonder and vanity. A pebble dropping into a glassy water but making no ripples… My face is melting, my hair is thinning, my knees betray me, my colon stops and my organs find a reason to rot inside me, and a senselessly determined foe claims me while the young ones pretend I’m not there. I’m pretending.