Poem

How did old age
become so different
from all the ways
I imagined it?

Was it too extreme
to fantasize a quiet
life as a respected
old writer?

Nowhere in the fantasy
were the feelings
of irrelevance
of neglect
of impotence
that I feel today
in the picture.

How wrong I was.
How invisible I am.
I am not even here.
You are imagining me.