Five Years

Five years will be 2021, which has a nice ring to it, and I think I'll be around for it, but I really can't think beyond that.

Five years is the outer limit of our imaginable future. Beyond this lies nothing.

Five years is what I was born in, a "five" year, two fives in one year.

Five years stuck on my eyes.

Five years old, and I am face down in Florida grass, among the toads and fire ants, imagining the year 2000, the "future," and I knew my numbers well enough to know that I'd be 45, and imagined what that would be like.

Five years is the exact span of time, to the day, that my father's father, brother, and mother, died, one by one, leaving my father, at age 33, completely bereft of ancestry.

Five years is the gestation period for the third world war.

Five years what a surprise.

Five years is how long you have to be cancer free to be "cured."

Five years on death row would give you plenty of time to think, to reflect, the solitude to discover yourself, knowing there is still plenty of time for a stay, while still thinking, every minute, every second of that minute, that second.

Five years is how long your father said you would live, and that you should never fly again, but it was in a dream, and he was already dead. My own father always said he'd be dead in five years. When he was 61, he was finally right.

Five years my brain hurts a lot

Five years and I'll be 66.

Five years from now is when I've always thought (no matter when when is) it would all end, every year, every day I can remember, it was five years, even before I heard the song, so when I did hear the song, it felt so true to what I already knew.

Five years that's all we got, and just like me, he meant it every time he sang it, because it was real, and the truth, even if it never happened.

 

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