aging

You see rust. I see art. Made by air. With metal. Playful. Deliberate. Composite art.

You shy away. You warn your kids and your delicate beloveds from touching me. I call it texture. I call it age, a sign I have lived awhile. Taken moist breaths. That I held strong. I held guard when I needed to. I protected, defended. I opened ajar. I might have pinched a finger or two in my lifetime. Memory evades. A gate when closed becomes a fence.

You see rust, I see my bones. You see danger, I see color, character. When I was new, young, I was like everyone else coming out of there, getting jointed to do our jobs. then came time. The wind, the air, the rain, the kids, the you, the them, the rust. You see rust. I see my skin. You see an unknown. I see my past and my present and my future too.

You’re planning on getting me removed, replaced, casting me away. You can bury me among the outcasts. But the rust will outlive my bones. It will eat me alive because rust doesn’t die. It spreads like love, like the will to make new things, the want to create something out of nothing, the need to stand up after falling down. Have you thought of where you will put all that rust? Have you thought of how you will contain all that energy and all those breaths; where you will fit us all?

What if the will to make, simply takes over the fear of unknowns? Slowly but surely. Like age. Like rust. One moist breath at a time.