Red Rot

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Puritan youth

I am who I may have romanticized in Puritan youth, an idea of a woman, unbound, with silver rings, drinking wine in early afternoon. Darker than me, but thoughtful, foreign.

I am at home with myself, and I am not who I thought I was.

The bloom is fading, but I don't feel lesser. I do feel afraid of age, of dying, of not having beauty to use as shield or weapon. I do feel afraid of loss and of not measuring up and of wasting the years. Wasting myself, slowly, in part of the body's long dance toward inevitable failure.

I do feel afraid of stupidity, of the inelegance of moments coloring the gold times grey.

I don't know why I spend time worrying at all, as if contemplation were some necessary progress, the brain a Cy Twobly painting, charting it's wars in chalk on blue backgrounds.

If it's all a dance, we dance. When I would play the piano, long fingers pressing black and white keys, I knew the player's secret. I couldn't play if I was thinking about it.

5:55 p.m. - 2020-01-20

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