I feel old before my time,
half-loved, worn out, past my prime;
a lonely man with nowhere to roam,
with rust in my heart and no place called home.
The world stopped dead when I learnt how to live,
and since that day, I've had nothing to give;
the streets have changed, the voices have too,
but some part of me still belongs to what I knew.
I spend my nights alone, with nothing to mend,
licking old wounds that refuse to end;
dust-covered scars beneath tired skin,
like forgotten letters no one's reading again.
I flick dead cigarettes onto the pavement below,
watching their embers fade in the cold glow;
each little spark, each grey bit of ash,
feels like a funeral for the man that I was.
I'm a stranger amongst every face in the crowd,
a nameless man beneath voices too loud;
and when I finally make my way back home,
I'm a stranger there too — even when I'm alone.
I'm barely twenty-five, yet I carry a hundred years,
a pocketful of failures, old silences and fears;
the world keeps moving, but I've fallen behind,
like yesterday's ghost in a modern mind.
Perhaps growing old is simply this:
losing the things we once thought we'd miss;
staying awake whilst everything's gone,
and talking to loneliness till the morning comes on.