Still Seven
I am out of paper.
Out of journals.
Out of pages to put down thoughts.
I have scribbled my last scribe.
Dribbled out the last adjective.
The last verb.
What does it matter?
All these thoughts and feelings
swirling around my head
like merry-go-rounds
gone wild.
I am still here.
Still extolling the same virtues
I did in 2001.
I am still here,
sitting in my room
with my back to the door,
looking out the window
at the squirrel and the bird.
I haven’t changed.
I am still seven,
twelve,
eighteen,
walking to school
dreaming of movies
and Academy Award speeches.
But everything else,
my parents,
my dog,
my sense of purpose,
has morphed into something else.
This morning,
the air is cold,
the wind ushers in fall,
and the leaves seem to laugh
with delight.
At last! At last!
Soon they will be bare
and it will begin again.
It is the unstripping
that brings me back.
The undoing of things,
of worries and fears
that keeps one young.
All is changing.
Even me.
I just can’t see myself.
