THE COOL OF MORNING drawn into his lungs felt like forever. The sun more friend than foe, he could run all day, which seemed eternal. 

Only buried men know time so slow, as a child lost in wonder.

Late again, Jack frantically shuffled through the heaping pile of papers and reports adorning his desk. Somewhere lay the answer he needed, if he could only find it. The report prepared for his boss explaining this and that detailing what could be done better about what was being done worse. On the back of Jack’s this and that report relied the hope of tomorrow - the boat, the lake house, the feeling of making it there finally and almost certainly a corner office. For years, Jack toiled in the obscure numbers of overachieving hopefuls aiming to impress. He too, set his sights on corporate glory, a day free of worry and full of desires met. To helm the wheel is what every man wants. How he gets it - well, that is the fight each man decides to square up to and arms to win, typically, at all costs. 

The desk moaned under the weight laid upon it. As its drawers slammed and doors pulled, you could hear its cry for stop, but Jack would find the report, even if it meant savaging the desk to pieces. When the last drawer pulled revealed no sign of the report, Jack lunged for his bag placed atop a sadly drooping box labeled, ‘kid stuff’, inscribed with a big, bold crooked X. Just below the crooked X clothed in pure kid genius parenthesis, as if to always remind himself, a rather forthcoming description: “Your treasure”. Suddenly, the smell of pines and adventure filled his nose, and then, the leather of his father’s belt which drove him away - maybe to this very desk, frantically trying to prove himself worthy of acceptance and achievement. He reached into the bag to find his report, his ticket to an achieved tomorrow, and a corner office and the adoration of those others in obscurity, too. To Jack’s elated relief, the report was there in the bag just as he had left it the night before as he reviewed it one last time.

But the labeled box, his a lifetime ago, marked with a big, bold crooked X begged for his attention so he pushed it out from under his desk to examine more thoroughly later, after his tomorrow achieving presentation. First things first. Jack stood from his desk and followed the routine: p

THIS DAY ONLY always felt like a day that belonged to others. Now he feels it - age pushing down on him like gravity suddenly doubled its strength. “Only old men think about such things,” he thought, caught off guard by his thinking of age and how short life now looks.

What matters - that’s all that matters now.

His hands look of time and strain, shackled by time keeping count. Lines cut deeper into his hands revealing time more accurately than the slipping watch wrapping around his thinner wrist. All these things stand out more. 

Down the aisle he shuffles, mostly lost in memories of days disappeared. His briefcase swings off his slumped shoulder with the rhythm of an effected gait. Of course he knew he’d grow old, but he never figured age would feel this way - the guilt, the fear, the tiredness and sentimentalism and loneliness. “The golden years . . . what a cruel joke!” he muttered as he slumped into his seat. Years and careers have grown thick, separating the family that remains.

Family hasn’t been the same since losing his wife of 26 years to a long, taking bout with the C. They don’t speak much of it directly, only look at pictures during the holidays and smile at a kept distance.