I am Among the Formerly Young
By Gene Aronowitz
Back then, at
fifteen, I ached,
to be sixteen, to drive.
When nineteen, longed
to be twenty-one, to drink.
And at thirty-five, wished
to be forty, seeking employee respect.
And then,
a discernible reversal occurred.
One morning, I coaxed
my nocturnally stiffened joints
out of bed
feeling like a wilted
five-day-old
funeral spray
in a sun-drenched graveyard
wondering when
it would finally be
cast away. I staggered
to the toilet.
Like a tree,
wondering how much its new rings
expanded its girth,
I peeked past a protruding belly,
at a big numbered scale,
and then, chagrined,
checked for parched and wrinkling skin,
doubling chin,
fragments of falling hair,
and resolved to at least
feel younger.
And then, something changed, like
seasons change, imperceptibly,
from one to the other,
I seemed to have missed
that moment, a momentous achievement
unnoticed,
when age didn’t matter. It had become
just a number, as they say,
And then, the yearning
of my youth paradoxically
resumed. I am among
the anxiously vulnerable,
was told to stay away from others,
wear a mask and gloves,
and make sure someone
knew how I was doing. Now,
In my
ninth decade,
I long to reach my
tenth.
