The man about eighty is unusually jaunty

His wife tries to disguise her pot belly

Glancing at others, thinking loud obvious thoughts

He wears a lapel and gold buttons adorn his cuffs

Head shining beneath unforgivable artificial light

Her forehead is stretched and keening years unspoken

But they are each other’s people

Greeting guests from out of town with the ease of familiarity

Strange birds and ordinary, they each hold up

A piece of their time

As we all do

And it scares me

To see in you, another era

Feel that invariable distancing

As you age faster and I stay

Conning the world I’m still a kid

Something easy to do with a neat figure and shiny hair

You can last in the artifice, make it your own

freckled fancy

Then comes a time

As I have seen in you

veins arching on the back of your trembling hand

When the game is harder

And you become at last

The age of you

Seeing the distance between

Then and now like a well deserved yawn

Dividing and multiplying

I have not the body of a mother

For I was never a mother

I have not the stories of ruling

For I never sought to rule

The spilled ink on my hands

Is the same shade as when

I did handstands on sweaty gym mats

In this time, I haven’t changed enough

While you are edging closer

To that moment when even

Adults as perpetual children

Must relinquish their tenuous claim

I see it stitched plain on your face

As if written with broad stroke

Both shocking and expected

We have so much in common

The years spent tightly woven together

But now you race ahead —

And I am still

Waiting my turn, curling my hair in

My pinkie finger

Caught between young mother’s
Whom I can never be

With my reducing, fluttering hormones

And women freed of children

Launching once again

Their second coup

Whilst I am tiring of freedom

I have stood with you both

Whilst being neither one

And the mask of me is not of my choosing

But a trick of light

Or memory

Betrayed rarely

As I thrive

In my duration

Not yet where you are

Not yet where you are