Numbers

Age is not a number.
It's an excuse, a reason why.
"No wonder he cries,
He's just a baby."
(Well, maybe)

It's a relative weight of worries.
In life, they come in droughts or flurries.
Weight, as well as cares,
We're losing or gaining as long as we're there.

Age is a peculiar procession of people,
The living and the ghosts.
(I'm not sure which haunt us the most)
Out of turn, they would mean nothing.
They are our shackles and our wings.

Age is a toggle-switch
Feeling in your bones
That you'll always or never be alone.
(If the temperature feels wrong
Now that you're in it,
Wait five minutes.)

Age is knowing the way out of hell,
But having no one to tell.

Age is a long awakening
From a restless slumber.
You can't count that in numbers.