6.26.2023 - Forty-Third

6.26.2023
Forty-Third

Forty-three times around the sun,
I somewhat expected forty-two to be longer,
Yet here I stand again in June.
I am wiser perhaps,
I prefer wizened.
Longer of tooth,
Stronger of tone,
I am more myself than I ever was.
Yet so like an echo,
Repeating endlessly toward the sea.
Greeting my shadow in my palms,
Amazed once again to be in this skin,
Tracing identity in the scars on my body,
Mirror slivers in the hands,
Fading ink below the surface.
We have technology to wash away,
The decades and return false youth.
Never was I that endless.
I carried eons in my eyes at birth.
My round shoulders foretold the sins I would carry.
The sun will rise tomorrow,
And what a world we shall build.
Each year another cold open.
The intensity of possibility,
Inexplicable and forever,
Returning with every tide.
I’ll be forty-four any day now.