May 8, 2015

THE OLD NEWSPAPER

All of us are newspaper reporters,

          telling our story,

          selling our story,

          trying to catch

          the other’s eye,

          reporting to others

          that we’ve been to Europe and Hawaii,

          that we have three grandchildren,

          that we have a cousin in California

          with a $750,000 home,

          and therefore please read

          that I’m okay,

          that I’m not a failure.

And sometimes when we begin

          to really trust another reader,

          we begin to report our failures,

          our sad stories,

          about our kids who dropped out,

          about divorces and drinking

          in the family,

          and how it all makes us feel so small.

And all of us know

          what it feels like

          to be misread,

          or what’s worse,

          to be rejected,

          to have someone

          just look at our headlines

          and then be thrown onto a pile,

          or to be used to wrap the garbage

          or for cat litter.

And all of us are part of every robbery and rape,

          and all those stories

          in Dear Abby or Dear Ann,

          stories of wives being used,

          and husbands being rejected,

          and teen-agers being sent to bed’

          right in the middle of their

          favorite TV show,

          story after story on insensitivity.

And all of us know the feeling

          of being used as paper

          to line the bottom drawer,

          hoping that someday,

          somebody will pick us up and say,

          “Hey, look at this old paper.

          Let’s see what it has to say.”

© Andy Costello Reflections, 2015