Rain

I am lost in the boil of the clouds and the rain and the steam rising off the streets. I'm soaked right through to the skin and my hands are so cold I can't move my fingers. I am alive. The path through the trees bears the scent of decay. Like a home or an old pair of jeans or the skin of a lover, I take for granted that I'll always find comfort there. I close my eyes and tread as if my feet will know the steps they've stepped before.
Halfway across the bridge, I stop and look out. The water level has risen. The river is flowing. Strange memories dance below the glassy surface, only to be whisked away and smashed onto the riverbed on the other side of the dam, rushing and tumbling as they try to rearrange themselves. They disappear behind leaning branches long before any semblance of coherence has been reached. Still, the water goes. Goes and goes like it knows where it's headed. Like something gigantic and fucking inevitable, like a hanged man, or something fated, it moves.
Sometimes, I think there's so much water this whole town is going to sink. Puddles reach up, up, and ankle-deep over the cracking pavement. The stormwater drains overflow, and still the rain comes.

Soon, it would seem, everything is going to fall down.

Whimper

Morning. The room smells like stale piss. They strip you bare and coo; wipe away the shit so you don't turn stomachs at the breakfast table. They dress you. They take you to begin today's circus. Incontinent and spoonfed, you gargle and wail and grab at the air until they strap you down. Choke you with lukewarm, lumpy porridge. Trapped in your chair, soiled and humiliated, you are alone. This is what you've worked so hard for. This is your reward.

As with everything, it is a whimper, and not a bang, with which we go in the end. Old age is infancy in a backward fashion, like you get to the strongest and the fastest and the most developed you'll ever be, and then the bastard with the remote presses rewind. At the end of the rainbow, there is no pot of gold, just a bedpan to catch whatever falls the fuck out of your prolapsed rectum as they sling you out of bed.

Your family may or may not visit. They may or may not care. For all you may have contributed to this society, for all the years you've spent walking among the living, all the children you may have raised, they are ungrateful. You are a rotting, disgusting thing to be swept out of view of polite society. You are to be kept moderately clean and somewhat presentable, lest any of the normal people deign to see you before you croak. For a while, you become a topic of discussion among the nurses and the drones. They discuss your difficulty breathing, your fluctuating temperature, your reddened genitalia... Then you die.

They strip you bare and whisper; wipe away the shit so you don't turn stomachs at the morgue. This is what you've lived so long for. This is your whimper.