I’m old now. The rest of us would have been the same as me, but they've all passed on. They declined and died before my time.
Once when much younger, they were far more capable than me, smarter, prettier, more popular, more successful. But everything ages, the new replaced the old, as always, and so they faded as icons of a past age.
I was ugly, unrefined, deemed a slowly falling fail; but my down feathers 🪶 took a long time to grow out of. And when I finally grew up in my middle age, my peers had begun winding down.
So I became less of a fluffy bird in mature years. But never got skinny and scruffy. I remained a little sparrow, and bird around like most other avians. Just when I thought I would dry up into a crunchy, jerky ball, my veins still flow.