Appearances

by Keelywolfe

When You Are Old and Gray

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a cloud of stars.

-W.B. Yeats-

 

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I am an old man.

I can admit that, if to no one but myself. The mirror shows me as an old man, with graying hair and a lined face, belying my mind's eye that still sees me only as I was when I was young.

But regardless of what I want to believe, I -am- old and I will grow older still. So you must understand why it is, on occasion, that I resent you. When I look at you with your youthful body that obeys your every command perfectly, without a single ache or a joint groaning in complaint. There are times when I watch you and, for just a moment, I hunger for that again.

I will freely admit that I never wanted you. Freely admit it to anyone but you. I never wanted you to come into my life and turn it to shambles. I never wanted you to love me. And I never, never, wanted to fall in love with you. Never.

So I held myself away from you. I let you remain in awe of me, remained distant and aloof in my dignity and watched you watch me with wonder in your eyes.

Never let it be said that I do not have my pride.

But I still wanted what you possessed and what I had lost. I wanted you and so when you came to me, shyly offering your love, I'm afraid I leapt on you with all the decorum of a starving man faced with a feast.

But truly, what else should I have done? Turned you away? Refused the sweetness of your kisses, never to learn you by touch and taste? Turned the hope in your eyes to ashes, dulled your brightness with hurt and yet another rejection from me?

Perhaps that would have been wiser. Perhaps. But I'm afraid I am far too selfish for that.

Instead, I immersed myself in your youth, which I had long since lost, and your beauty, which I had never possessed and at that moment I could not say that I loved you as much as I needed you. I * used * you to taste youth again through your senses and it would have been worth any price to me to see myself as I appeared through your eyes.

I could feel how thrilling it was to you that I, Qui-Gon Jinn, your master, was touching you and was naked against you, moving inside you. Briefly, I could feel everything that you were, the burn of newly stretched muscles as I thrust inside your virgin passage, pain yes, but your head was swimming with a dizzy mixture of ecstasy as well and you were looking at me, at -me-, but what you saw was not me. It terrified me because what you saw, what I saw, was a god.

And I cannot be a god. Not even for you.

As I am, as this, I am beyond unworthy of such a beautiful creature as you, my Padawan, if ever I was worthy. And I wonder how I will ever find the strength to let you go when you finally see me for what I truly am.

I'm not certain that I can bear watching the awe and love in your eyes fade into reality. And when I am no longer a god, you will no longer worship me and I will lose the one thing that I never wanted but that is beyond precious to me because of a simple fact that I cannot change, no matter how much and how long I wish it to be so.

I am an old man.
 

-finis-
 

 

Comments and questions to:  mailto:keelywolfe@gmail.com

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