Thirty-Nine Is Like A Diagnosis, My Wife Says:
One year to live. She digs her heels in
against time's locomotive. It screeches and wails.
But there's no traction. She keeps sliding back.
"I remember my Sweet Sixteen party," she cries.
"What I ate, what I wore, who came.
For God's sake, I still subscribe to Tiger Beat . . ."
My swearing she looks thirty doesn't help.
Neither does silence, love, pills, diets, exercise . . .
If I could only grab her hands and pull her back
inside our hijacked plane, while Age, that terrorist,
falls out, shrieking. Instead, she's pulling me:
"At oldies revivals, the women croak like toads.
Their high notes have shrivelled with their ovaries.
It isn't fair. The guys can all still sing!"
I want to tell her, aging's no picnic for me.
No potato salad. No burgers sizzling in flames.
"We'll get through this together," I manage to say
as famished ants keep dragging me away.