An excerpt from a (very long) short story I am working on. It's about growing old and the misconception of the glory of youth and nobody caring about old people and yadda yadda yadda....
//He thought he may have slightly peaked the young woman’s interest, as she finally sat on the bed and stopped moving around so much. She held a pen she had found on the old man's night stand that he was having trouble putting back together, after he had attempted to refill the ink. She worked on this while he continued on.
“The song reminds me of details I never want to forget. A specific cluster of freckles. The crow’s feet creases on the sides of someone’s eyes that I loved. There is a big misconception about wrinkles, don’t you think? I don’t see the big fuss. I loved my mother’s wrinkled hands….”
He looked down at his own hands, which had endless maps of creases all over them, then looked at the young woman’s smooth hands working diligently at his pen, and began to doubt himself. Maybe there really was something wrong with one’s body failing, drifting away. Stereotypes and fears do have to come from somewhere, after all. //
