I’m turning     40     this year     and     each year
increases     the effort     required     to be 25.
I pulled     a hamstring     and felt     a spirit
squeeze     between     the muscle     and     bone.
Effort     begins     to require     more
effort.                                                           I’m good
is what     I say     when     people
who don’t     know     me
ask how     I am.                        Being good
is how     one has     manners.       I need  
a book     called      how to     help someone    
beyond     cooking.     How to     cook someone  
beyond     helping—that’s what     I used   to do
on     a court.     When anyone     a decade     younger
than you     calls themselves     old,     the urge is
to vomit.     The urge is     to not     look
        your age.

*

There’s a     freedom of     coolness
beyond     coolness,     which     arrives
on my     mother’s     shoulders,     who is     herself,
nothing     more.     Her incipient     hump,
her stubborn     resistance to     assistance.
How long     she’s been     watching     the sparrow
of her     mind     migrate     south     in     silence.
What we     see     now:     the dropping     of keys,
of     words,     of her     body     to pavement
at     the bottom of     a flight     of stairs.
This isn’t     the beginning of     disease.
This is     the end of         pretending.

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