Next Chapter
Life is lived as a book, so I’m told
and we live out this story in chapters.
And we even write of the stories we’ve lived
and regale with tales of our adventures.
Our childhood is a myriad of stories
filling chapter and chapter with discovery,
wonder, angst, joy, everything in growing up.
Our teens are chapters of pain, confusion and
experimentation. Temptation. Rebellion and growth.
Young adulthood … ah, sweet love. Career, family.
First foray into independence and building a family.
Then chapters for kids, school, braces, college …
Then they grow up and move out. Weddings, grandkids
retirements and IRA’s. The book is expanding.
But this book is predictable. This is the Brady Bunch.
Where is the crisis, the divorce or the addiction?
Where is the mental illness or the adulterous affair?
Where is the poverty, the abuse, unknown calamity or death?
If life is truly a book, then we write our chapters as we go.
There is no cookie-cutter life to stamp out and imitate.
Life is fluid, moving, changing, consuming, powerful,
destructive in its unrelenting, impersonal path.
This is the end of this chaotic chapter, a fresh page awaits.
Too many of my chapters are chaotic and destructive.
While the next chapter can’t be written until it has been lived,
I will make it a chapter worth remembering.
One I will want to read again, and again.
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