Now I am sixty and my eyes are failing,

so the blue-hued kettle on the kitchen counter

becomes a dark apparition. 

A marauder’s mask with horns; 

scarier still I cannot see the edges. So

as my eyes come grinding to a close, 

I cannot tell where my kitchen counter

ends.



Now I am sixty and my eyes are failing,

my eyes are failing, did you know?

and my memory has begun to desert me – 

my mother: petite, lithe and straight shouldered

melts into pictures drawn in my childhood.

Grotesque pictures of square, jutting foreheads; 

a man with fifteen scribbled lines for a chin and a 

crooked back, a deformed hump. 



I have tasted most of what the world can offer

and though I have forgotten it, my tongue

still remembers. A taste of bread dipped

in sugared chai; not tasted in fifty years, till today.

Not shocking or sweet as all food once was but

stale.

 

My nose may chastise my mind, saying

“I work as well as I did thirty years ago

when perfume was all I smelt!”

I would not know. 



My muscles are tired and my heart,

having sprinted and then jogged so many years

has now slowed to an unsteady walk, for 

water has been years in coming. 

And so now I venture out rarely 

and the nasal claims may be true.

I do not know. 



My hands have been hacked and now, heavily 

lined, they are still useful but not powerful. 

I can no longer grasp a neck, pull lips to mine

while the other unbuttons. I do not have the strength

To force these moments to their crises. 



Now I am sixty, 

I’ve decided.

I will not live to seventy.