Today I passed the middle of my life exactly.
It’s my call: we all pick our time of death.
It struck me undeniably like the way some
know the death of a loved one or that
they have cancer. I am Janus
looking forward and backward, sad for
what I leave, yet pulled ahead to what is
possible. Some things just can’t be transferred.
How to mark this midpoint, to linger
and savor or rush through so as not
to get caught up in the fabrics
in the doorway between then and now.
If your only fault is that I may never write
a poem about you, well, that may be
surmountable. You may have other things
I need. I need help crossing this street,
I fear carnage. Do this one thing and I
will stay in your bed all night even when
I want to roam at three a.m., find my keys
and cry in the car, missing the one before
the one who changed me irreversibly
who bound me to him with secrets.
I know it will fade, everything fades
and everything is permanent. Everything.
Eclipse, A Literary Journal, Volume Fourteen, Fall 2003
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