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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