Poem One

End Game

 

Is it my imagination?

Is it like this for everyone?

My ten year old me timidly not seeing much else.

But the thirteen year old is elbowing for space – not quite as innocent.

 

Life hasn’t been linear.

My ten year old had no doubt, was confident.

My twenty year old had a lot more uncertainty, had to consider where I fit in, and realized that

I was not floating on a preordained template. Had to plan and decide.

The certainty of uncertainty hit home.

 

Looking back I realize how privileged and cared for I was.

So sure that the future had a plan for me.

 

Grappling, I realized I needed to jump templates from cared for child who didn’t need to make decisions to a struggling student whose grasp of quadratic equations defined who I was to a being with choice. Who do I want to be?

 

The answer came in a flash of light and a combination of circumstances, the words of a teacher and a bum on the street.

 

Family and career engulphed the new me. And like every other phase it moved on to the next undefined stage as one more curtain rose and fell in my play.

 

I planned three surgeries and tumbled into another during this endemic pandemic that at times seems bathed in pathetic. Is anything different as I see ugly roar like a lion all over the globe?

 

My onionskin self has so many me’s to consider the new world and where I fit in.

Friends and acquaintances are falling like trees in a cyclone. Is this a weird combination of circumstance or is it age?

 

I guess I’ll need to figure that out.