Miami

I've been sitting outside in Miami drinking coffee this morning.  It is not nearly as romantic as it sounds although I am surrounded by palm trees, ripe mango plants (and noise).
The trip started out very stressful and hasn't changed much, the main attraction may have been yesterday, but the reason for the trip happens today.
It was, perhaps, the stress, but more likely the feeling of age that left me sleepless.
How old do I have to be before I finally give up on the last vestiges of hope for life.  But while I am old, and while everything is failing, from my broken eyes to my broken heart, yet I can still draw out strange resources of strength on increasingly rare occasions, racing against much younger people through the water, sometimes winning by speed, at others by endurance, more often losing; and more importantly occasionally inspiring that ember of passion to flare, what used to happen whenever I thought of you.  It is certainly true that each of these posts represents that smoldering ember which should have gone out when I began to accept my own ramblings, but for whatever reason, it remains warm to the touch even as I get steadily colder, even as the bonds between us get attenuated and my ability to justify them is reduced, not by the lack of potential, but by the lost opportunities which can never be recaptured and the increasing likelihood that each flaring of the ember is its last.
I should give up on life, but you can hardly consider it unreasonable if I refuse your requests to hurry its inevitable demise, for the certain darkness at the end of that does not frighten me, but a world without you does.