Birthday

Now the open mouths of the 3, or are they breasts
without a backbone? The 8 is the cold shape

I failed to learn on skates, my body awkward
with every turn on the crackling ice,

or maybe it's a twisted sign
of the never-ending. Another year.

I'm thinking about time and the way we carry it
like luggage, moments folded up like shirts

to be packed, then shaken out in some other place
as memories. How we wrinkle everything.

Or if time's not baggage, it's something we attack
with watches—all our needless mincing

into minutes, hours, years.
Thirty-eight years. This reckoning is hard:

no lover, no child, no payment
on a house with hardwood floors that I'd cross

just to hear the sound of my own walking.
Click click. But look at this new age

I'm turning into: mouths and breasts and infinity
standing on end.

 

Poems by Melody Lacina: