Then there’s not so much we take with us from those days into these days.

The flashes of fireflies an hour after sunset. The battle against inevitable darkness, a summer evening’s fading light; sweat still running as the sun sets in an explosion of fire in a bank of clouds. The bone deep exhaustion and the toll taken by the days heat.

I’m taken to hayfields in moonlight when the measure of the days success was the number of deadly vipers avoided and the sweet memory smell of cut grass.

The painful acceptance there are many more of these days behind me than in front of me, and the very real need to make all of them that remain last until I’m all used up and gone.