Very early in my life, I was too late.
An over-aged precocious young thing,
standing on a stage in full lights
hand held to my brow, trying to see
the audience. Asking was that good enough?
The panic in aging, watching baby years
tick up, dreading birthdays when the cake
still had all that room for 80 years more
of candles.
The wriggling lie that life was over
at eighteen or twenty-five, thirty,
burrowed deep and no clawing got it out.
Now the lost chance to be someone's
protégé, young wife, mother, all falling
over a cliff of too old as if marched by time
right off the edge.
Now
near forty and astonished
that I am still here at all
still every version of self
folded in and tucked away
like a strange accordion envelope,
I lean over the edge of what I was always told
was the end: of me, of joy, of possible lives,
and laugh into the wind and salty air.
