FIRST FORTY, March 2021
It feels as if I have lived forty years
and yet, as if I’ve been dying for the last one.
Each day,
piece by piece,
Slowly s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y
day by day, I turn to ash.
For a year now,
my life has been passing before my eyes.
Each moment,
lining up one by one,
reminding me it exists.
I live them all over and over again,
and place them back where they belong.
For a year now,
every cell I carry ache one by one,
Are taking deep breaths.
I’ve carried the headache of forty years.
My whole body tingling
as if I’ve been lying on it for years.
For a year now,
I am being born again.
Each experience,
untying itself, one by one,
rebuilding itself anew.
I cast away the forty-year fatigue of every feeling I had refused to name.