Tuesday, March 5, 2013

On my Twenty-Fifth Birthday


     On my Twenty-Fifth Birthday

This year, I want to lose something.
Not a pound
     or a bad habit
(though I would,
 really),
but something of moderate significance:
my car
     my cell phone
          a notebook of poems finished but never read.
I want to feel an absence; to not quite know
what is in it. To look
at the drive way
     or the bookshelf
knowing I could fill it if I wanted,
knowing there was something I once
wanted more.

I am told I will not be young forever. Already, I feel
the old woman in my skin telling me
what I should do, what I should
not say.
I feel her wrinkled cheeks
inside my cheeks when I wake in the morning.
I see her softening skin in the puddles
when I walk, and she smiles
when I smile. Sometimes I lace my fingers
through the surface to touch her hand.
 
I do not want to lose the old woman. I want
to lose something she thinks
she already knows.



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