At first, I noticed I couldn’t lift
thirty heavy boxes up two
flights of stairs without being
rejected by them,
then my right gave way,
causing me to drop my box,
and I reached for it in pain,
the way a lover having come
home from a long journey
drops his bag and reaches
for the surest woman who once
held him up, except she’s
not interested anymore.
I had another faithful knee though,
so for a couple of years,
she took most of my failures
on the chin, until the inflammation
got so bad I had to stop
one afternoon on my walk
to the orthopedist’s and consider
hitching a ride for the last
quarter mile. My knees, the old girls,
weren’t going to save each other, never
mind my pride, anymore.
That’s when I started thinking
about gliding through the world,
rather than walking up and down
across it, young bucks would
run past me on the curb and I’d
think to myself there they go,
still thinking they will never fall,
and I’m here for you buddy, just
skate on home atop that thin ice
of being left permanently behind.
Now my feeling of abandonment,
is a kind of skating rink where
beautiful versions of me who can
no longer hold themselves up
can go to flirt with one another
without having to break through
with an icebreaker. In my head,
I glide amongst my thoughts
in a kind of softened, harmonious
dance, each turn of phrase, slow,
precise, and practically weightless,
like a swan gliding across the fluid-like
illusion that grace doesn’t hurt
and requires no effort or pain
to uphold. It does.
