29

Twenty-nine years ago today at 9:55 AM, I was born.

I really can't believe it's the last year of my 20s. My life so far seems to have sailed by. Sometimes I feel I have little to show for the time I've been alive, but I know that's not really true. I have a husband, family, friends, education, passions, and a whole lot of books and Post-its. I am already feeling a sense of mourning for my 20s, but I know that life after this decade has a lot of good things in store for me.

I wrote a little something in honor of my birthday and the way in which I've grown as a person. (Actually, I wrote it about a month ago, but I edited it with my birthday in mind.) Although it mentions marriage, the poem is not about Roy, but his influence is there, definitely. I've included a photo I took of his eye, just because it fits (in my muddled brain, anyway).

I'm proud of this poem (or I guess it's actually more of a prose poem). It's rare that I write anything worth sharing.


29

I see you from time to time in my dreams. You stand small, a faded photograph of my self. Sometimes I awake without you, and I feel like you might have never existed. You and I have parted silently, divided only by the frailty of time. But here you are again, my strange familiar.

You are unassuming and slight, weighing only 100 pounds. You exist in dark rooms and speak through sideways glances. You long to fade away, but with each year, your legacy becomes richer and harder to bear.

You are at once the gasp of my heartbeat and its flat thudding, the disillusioned eyes that regard me with wisdom. You are my empty hand, laying palm up. You are the other, full of water.

You are married to me, and I to you. You are the reason I chase authenticity and my justification for rejecting idealism. I am simultaneously afraid and alive because of you.

You are wonderful and quiet as you sit there in the corner, and even now I don’t really know what to do with you. I was never exactly kind to you. You always ate darkness for dinner, inhaled depression as you smoked, and slept fitfully through black nights. I could not understand your obsession with shame.

You, old relic, dig yourself up by night and leave the room smelling of spent cigarettes and blue perfume. Everything about you is blue. When I choose this color, I am choosing you. When I choose this color, I am forsaking you.

****

Happy birthday to me and all the other June 7 babies (like Prince, or whatever he's calling himself these days)!