CRAQUELURE

His life work, every scrawling, the sad summation of a novel gone by.  He wrote, unknowingly, the final words to a thousand novels, never noticing the striking similarities to the hum -- a quiet hum, a deafening pattern that would one day do him in.  The small things that kept him alive.

The kind of honesty you never understand until you're older.  When you've had the experiences.  When you've had that life.  When you've held that hand.  When you've been there and tasted all there is inside, those sweet insides.  When you learned the hard way.  When you felt the weight of the head of your first born.  When you had a real brush with death (or life) and all the minutiae of your routine is given a perspective and priority.  Some kind of reality, even when you normally think existence is stupid and meaningless.

Hands fold into each other.  Fingers weave into a bed of nettles - a thickened, tired skin -- a craquelure, withered with time.