An Old Woman
The past has come apart
events are vagueing
the future is a seedless pod
the present pain.
Not even pain has that precision
with which it struck youth.
Years like moths
erode internal organs
hanging or falling
in a spoiled closet.
Does you mirror bedevil you?
Or is the impossible
possible to senility?
How could the erstwhile
agile and slim self—
that narrow silhouette—
come to contain
this huge incognito—
this bulbous stranger—
only to be exorcised by death?
Dilation has entirely dominated
your long reality.
