I am seventy-five
and the world I tried to conquer
lies behind me like a broken map—
creases where I folded it too hard,
tears where I dragged others with me,
ink smeared by the storms I refused to name.
I chased kingdoms that dissolved at my touch,
chased honor like a frightened soldier,
chased love with the blunt weapons
of a man afraid of softness.
And in the chase
I left scars on the ones I meant to protect.
Time has turned my victories to dust,
and the dust into questions.
Now the nights are long enough
that ghosts rise
not to accuse,
but to remind.
They say:
You lived like a man marching,
but those you loved
needed a man listening.
There is grief in this age—
a grief without enemy or battlefield—
the grief of memory,
of sudden tenderness for people I hurt
while believing I was building a future.
We are told
men in their final chapters want peace,
respect,
freedom,
companionship,
and trust.
But I would add a sixth:
absolution—
not from heaven,
but from ourselves.
At seventy-five I find myself in solitude,
not the isolation of defeat,
but the solitude that feels like
a small room God left unlocked
so I could finally sit with my own soul
and not flee.
In this solitude,
time becomes sacred again,
as I once wrote—
a kind of tzimtzum in reverse—
God expanding into the cracks
I spent a lifetime ignoring.
Here I can finally feel the wreckage
without drowning in it,
touch the scars without reopening them.
If there is redemption for men like me,
it lives not in what we conquered,
but in what we now choose to release.
The sons and daughters of my striving
carry marks I never intended,
but perhaps the final kindness of age
is the chance to say:
I see it now.
I see you now.
I am seventy-five,
and though the world I built leans crooked,
something in me
leans toward mercy.
Maybe this is what it means to grow old—
to stop asking for victory
and start asking for forgiveness.
And maybe,
if the heart is willing,
even the wreckage can glow.
