The Romance of Middle Age

Now that I’m fifty, let me take my showers at night, no light, eyes closed. And let me swim in cover-ups. My skin’s tattooed with hours and days and decades, head to foot, and slim is just a faded photograph. It’s strange how people look away who once would look. I didn’t know I’d undergo this change and be the unseen cover of a book whose plot, though swift, just keeps on getting thicker. One reaches for the pleasures of the mind and heart to counteract the loss of quicker knowledge. One feels old urgencies unwind, although I still pluck chin hairs with a tweezer, in case I might attract another geezer.