Maybe it’s true. You get to an age.
Call it existential. Call it mid-life. Call it
finding home again as you wind down
from the life you’ve known so long,
skin thinner, reservoir receding.
The squeak and whistle of the pipes,
hissing of the old radiator. I don’t want
to explain myself. Just let me be
without shaming, without adjectives,
with no limits as to what you see
I can be. I know me. I’ve spent my life
in this body. This body that has transcended
and faltered; that I’ve shared willingly,
and that was taken from me once.
But I’ve built this house from plank
and brick, crackled tile in sky blue,
hand-wrought iron, filigreed. No floor
in this house buckles, no weakness
in these walls. Each chamber is framed
in rosewood & purpleheart. Each timber
made stronger from the quaking.
© Barb Reynolds