Age comes to you abruptly. You are young, your skin supple and bronze. And then you look at your hands and they are not yours but the hands of an old man.
The skin is thin, showing more of the underlying architecture, the veins and cappilaries.
You resist. Those can't be mine. I'm still youthful.
You see bronze there, but also blue splotches. When did they arrive?
And the crepe-like wrinkles?
Make a fist, you think, and stretch the skin tight. The wrinkles will disappear. A facelift for the hand.
But then the skin becomes even more transparent and you stare into the depths of your flesh.
No, you say, I'm no longer youthful, not, at least, in body.
The back of my hand, its surface delicately pleated, thin ripples stirred on water by a soft breeze, tells the truth.
Time -- our time here -- is not infinite.
Use it wisely.