• oh, the many skins i've shed
    in an hour effects twofold the
    grief in a friend's passing.
    it is a slow and heart-
    wrenching disappearance,
    aging is, yet i am impatient
    to rattle open from pods which
    fix me to my inadequacies.
    by noon tomorrow i should
    have learned to seam
    cardiac patches (only
    to lament their decay after)
    and sit up ever straighter,
    for day by day the occupation
    i seem to ever get good at
    is bending. i pluck the white
    in my hair like snapping
    ukelele chords (watch my
    body tremble in the
    final vibrations of a tune)
    and wait for the rest of me
    to bleach an aging hue.
    only my shadow, bowed
    and gravitating to the western
    floor, gets darker by the hour.