Ghosts

The years weigh down on me
I may be young now
but the life song of all the ages
echoes through my veins
the lives and voices of generations past
twining themselves around my heart
it's like listening to scratchy 78 records
imagining Caruso and Edith Piaf
singing and flushed with life
never imagining themselves to be mere
ghosts with voices
mourning for times I've never seen
nostalgic 
moments fleeting
I cannot shake the sense of my own
mortality
I wish I had something to hold onto
but nothing is real at all
and someday I will have reached my last day
and it will seem all too logical, then
I will not ask, 'how is it that I reached this age?'
but I will remember each year passing
and though I will still be bewildered of death
I will accept it as truth,
having the evidence of my life behind me
and in a world that offers no comfort from
emptiness and senseless death
I will have no choice but to let my senses
drift and my eyes to flutter closed one final time